2001: A Space Odyssey

 

Remembering

2001: A Space Odyssey

I think I must have first seen this film on late night TV when I was like 7 years old. Compared to Star Wars it was dreadfully sssslow and the plot felt confusing and discordant.

But wait - isn't that Leonard Rossiter straight out of Rising Damp?

So I stuck with it, even tho the ending made no sense.

Years later at School our English teacher showed the film to our class, none of which had seen it before or understood it. So at least I had one up on them.

I can say that with confidence because those kids had never watched a sci-fi film in their lives. You could tell just by looking at their gaping mouths and confused looks. Like their mothers had just turned up dressed as sexy Jabba Slave girls.

Up until that point it was all about foot ball, football and more football. I was like the class geek because I knew all about this movie.

So we're deep in The Dawn of Man and we finally get to the Monolith scene and all the monkeys are freaking out to the discordant polyphonic sounds of Ligeti's 'Requiem' .

The class are horrified.

'Whats that funny singing all about miss?' Asks one snotty nose kid. Good point. What is all that singing about? I kind of know the answer already but I cant articulate it.

'Its to show the monoliths power' explains the teacher. Though I don't think that blew anyones mind. Would any of these kids grow up to be movie directors or composers? Fuck no. Most these kids will be kids will be mothers and fathers by the time they are 21.

Watching it now as an adult, its still dreadfully sssslow and the plot still feels confusing and discordant.

But as a film maker I get all that. And now I've come to love its idiosyncrasies.

However one cant watch this film in a vacuum. Reading various articles over the years has helped me understand this movie a whole lot better. But still, a few self explanatory scenes wouldnt have gone a miss surely. It bothered me when I was seven and it still bothers me now.

Like a quick shot of Daves pod entering the Star Gate thing.

Something like this :

After deactivating the Hal 9000, Dave discovers the mission directives.

He takes a pod out to investigate the giant monolith floating over Jupiter...

As Dave fly's over the monoliths surface, his pod becomes engulfed in arcing electricity and is pulled towards it.

Dave is somewhat concerned about all this.

The pod is pulled thru the star gate.

And there's nothin Dave can do about it.

It is quite likely that a lot of these scenes were never filmed or cut out. Or that they simply ran out of money and time and just had scrabble together what they had. I guess a lot of the ending was improvised with heavy editing.

Who knows.

The point is I was seven and largely understood the bulk of the movie but the ending kinda went off the rails due to a lack of quick A to B scenes. Had they just spent a little more time on these, the movie might have grabbed more laymen into the fold, rather than the higher echelons of movie academia.

But thats cinema folks.

Oppenheimer - review

 

Big Fat Dud ?

OPPENHEIMER 

AKA 

YAP-FEST 23

A little less talk and a little more action

My opinions will probably get me a stoning offence. But as a frustrated film maker, I look at such movies and just wish I could steer them in the right direction. But never mind. Here goes. 

Ask anyone, I hate giving bad reviews. Not that anyone cares. I hate critics that slam movies for being a breed apart, for going that extra mile, for being different. However Oppenheimer is not that movie. 

I couldn't believe I was actually duped by the idea that this film could be something worth my time. Afterall, an all star cast lead by the robust Cillian Murphy, Robert Downy Junior and Matt Damon, what could possibly go wrong? 

Well plenty it seems. And like the Emperors New Clothes, I suspect most critics will praise it for all sorts of academic reasons. 

But it simply didn't grab my attention. And heres why. 

TOO MUCH YAPPING. 

Don't get me wrong. I like a dialogue heavy film as much as the next movie buff. But sometimes you just want to be wowed by some gratuitous sex and a big explosion. And on the face of it, this movie has all that to offer. Altho, those sex scenes are kinda ruined by all that yapping. 

Put it this way, if you like nothing more than talking heads for three hours then this is your movie. Because that is pretty much what you'll get. 

LOUD YAPPING. Quiet Yapping. Frenzied Yapping. YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH type yapping. But as the audience, we're not really connecting with any of this. Oppenheimer yaps to this guy, then it cuts to Oppenheimer yapping to that guy. Then it cuts to Oppenheimer yapping with some girl. Then it cuts to Oppenheimer having sex with said girl and they're still yapping. Yap-yap-yap.  Jeeze. Get to the friken bomb already. 

And that is essentially this movie. Just a series of talking heads cut from one scene to another. And nothing much in between. Anything of interest (like showing us the bomb being built) is all quickly mulled over because Oppenheimer is suddenly at the centre of some McCarthy-ish witch hunt.  

And who's this movies primary audience anyway? Nuclear Physicists? Academics? Because it feels like a film that excludes a lot of useful exposition in favour of just getting to those talking heads. Of which this movie has in abundance. Literally. Its all Cinéma vérité American Style, cerebral, yap-yap-yap. Thats what movies have come to these days. I guess.  

TOO MANY CHARACTERS 

And who the hell are all these people anyways? There's just too many side characters. None of which are really given any real validity. Its like this movie has no focus. 

That said, Robert Downy Junior ingeniously plays the bad guy Strauss,  hell bent on taking  Oppenheimer down. But its all done in such a elongated fashion, with so much happening in between, that his intentions are seldom noticed by us, the audience until way too late. 

Its not like theres any mystery to Strauss. Its just not made clear either way why he hates Oppenheimer because every scene in this movie is riddled with too many characters who all want to be centre stage.

Even the goddam secretary wants her 15 minutes. By which point we've forgotten all about ole' Strauss and his evil plot to undermine Oppenheimer. 

Put it another way. In the Mozart film Amadeus, its perfectly obvious that Mozarts foil, the enigmatic Antonio Salieri (played by F Murry Abraham) is out to get him. A trick that Oppenheimer seems to have missed. 

Even with JFK (which also had a hell of a lot of side characters milling about), one could still keep up with the plot. 

RUNS LIKE A TRAILER 

If you've seen the trailer, you might think wow this movie looks awsum!  That is until you actually watch it and you realise that the entire movie is essentially edited just like said trailer. You could say it is a three hour long trailer. The longest movie trailer ever made. 

You know like when you watch movie trailers, theres those talking heads (again), and one guy says something profound to the other guy. Like:  'We gotta do this thing first before the Nazis do.'  

Then it cuts to something intense. A sex scene, a fight scene, whatever.  Shit like that. This is Oppenheimer in its entirety. 

But I guess thats Nolans approach to film making. It kinda worked with his Batman movies but as a serious bi-op based on real events, I think we as the audience need a more linear approach. 

NO BOMB

For a movie that is all about building the worlds first ever atomic bomb, very little interest is directed upon showing the actual bomb itself. Its all Oppenheimer. Hence the title. At least with similar war movies such as The Imitation Game that covers the life of code-breaker Alan Turing, we get a sense of the protagonist grappling with the technology, plugging things in, trying to get his machine to work. 

But Oppenheimer is pretty much Oppenheimer and very little else. 

A few shots of technicians building the bomb might have gone down nicely.  Surely thats a whole five minutes of tension? Handling those radio active blocks, like a deadly game of Tetris? 

But no. And I'm left there thinking,  Wheres the scenes of nervous tech guys covered in sweat, slowly, carefully putting the 'Demon Core'  together?  Despite later claiming the lives of two physicists, at no point is this ever mentioned or even alluded to. 

But we do get marbles. For every ounce of Uranium-235 that is mined and refined, Oppenheimer drops the equivalent of a marble into a large goldfish bowel. Its a neat way to illustrate the hassle to mine this stuff and it really works but the fact that we're kinda lacking the whole building the bomb thing, leaves the audience hanging. 

Nor are the stakes really justified. We get a couple of scenes with nervous scientists and Einstein, here and there and a brief run down by Oppenheimer to the General, that the bomb could possibly set the atmosphere on fire but never mind. 

DUD CLIMAX 

But worst of all is the actual bomb test itself. 

We've all been gearing up to this one moment kids, for a good two and half hours. 

I'm sitting there thinking, this better knock my fucking socks off. I mean its the worlds first ever test of an atomic bomb right? Which could potentially wipe out our entire planet and then some. It better be good.  

So they do the count down. A tech guy presses a big red button. And then pffffff.  Jesus what a dud. 

The screen is filled with a fireball. No sound. Its all for the sake of art of course, for dramatic effect. Like those moments you see in war movies when the chips are down and the bad guys are closing in. 

Like the end of I am Legend. Will Smith is trapped behind a glass door. The king of the infected football yobs is doing his dammdest to head-but his way inside. 

They always cut the sound.  You have to imagine the horror for yourself. I get it. Theres probably some movie term for it. Like 'neo-realist-interplay'.  Who knows.  Answers on a post card please. 

So the bomb goes off. And I'm expecting some spectacular CGI effect feast. What we get is probably one of the lamest explosions ever filmed. Sure It looks real enough. Like they actually got a bunch of TNT and let it all off. In fact thats precisely what they fucking did. And it jars with the expectation. 

What should be a godly explosion, striking fear and horror into the audience, is instead a rather run-of-the-mill bang that you might expect from a studio controlled pryo-tech effect. 

And thats all it is. A small looking explosion. A fireball yes, a mushroom cloud (sorta) but not the crazy wow I should receive for being stuck here for three fucking hours. I felt cheated. 

Thank god I didn't have to pay to see this movie. At least I can spend that money now on coke & hookers afterwards to recover. 

Talking of big bangs, take Indiana And the Temple of Chrystal Skulls. Remember the A-bomb scene at the beginning?  Basically any movie with an Atomic bomb going off is better than what I had to endure with Oppenheimer. I've seen better ka-booms in the A-Team and thats saying something. 

The decision to go for a real explosion was (in my humble opinion) a mistake. Director Christopher Nolan might have thought it was a cool idea at the time but it simply doesn't work in the context of the narrative. 

Its like watching Star Wars and Lucas changing the grand finale explosion of the Death Star to something a little more 'realistic' which would likely be quite boring.  

Take Camerons Titanic movie as another example. If the boat just 'sank' like it did in all the other movies, we'd never be lauding that film up as much we have. Ask any schmuck what was the most memorable scene in that movie and they will most likely say: 'When the boat broke in half.' 

In a few years, I doubt anyone will recall that about Oppenheimer. If they remember anything about it at all. 

ALL IN ALL 

So there you have it. My two-pence on this film. Its not a turkey by any rate. But it takes for granted that the audience are all on the same page. This might keep most film critics entertained but as for yours truly, I barely made it to the end without dozing off. But thats just me I guess. 

What would I change about this movie then? Actually I would change very little bar all the yapping. What this movie really lacked was simple memorable scenes. It needed more building the bomb stuff, tension around the Demon Core and basically a humungous explosion that would have put any Spielberg movie to shame. Oh well. Maybe next time. 

ANCIENT TECH PARADOX

 

The paradoxical problem of the older the tech, the more advanced?

ANCIENT TECH PARADOX 

The above image is part of an Inca Wall in ancient city of Coricancha Temple, Cusco, Peru, South America. A so-called example of polygonal masonry and skill made by chaps with primitive hammers and chisels apparently.

And this might very well be the case. However, most of our assumptions on such things, are via a Victorian /Edwardian perspective. As are the majority of books on such discoveries.

Bearing in mind this is not a door but a alcove maybe under five feet high. Those Victorian /Edwardian books will have us all believe these alcoves were display areas, containing wooden shelves and displaying ornate statues, made of gold etc.

But why go to so much trouble to make a alcove for such a mundane thing? And the horizontal grooves or slots for shelves look decidedly wonky and completely impracticable to receive a nice level shelf.

So I would suggest an ulterior motive. But one must first consider that we are perhaps not the only society of this planet to have achieved an highly advanced technological society of swipey-wipey stuff.

Consider too, that in a mere 300 years we have harnessed electricity to the point that we can now split the atom or watch Netflix. But at no point have we ever bothered to go to all the trouble of making alcoves with such intricacy beyond say biblical architecture. Not recently at least.

Thus, its entirely possible our ancient ancestors were far more advanced than we give them credit. Something those old dusty Victorian /Edwardian books would never consider. Advanced enough that they required generators and other machinery to power buildings and establish communications with other towns.

In that respect, such an alcove as this, might have housed some sort of electrical equipment. Note the large hole, originally a rectangle window or aperture, with several blocks missing below it. Possibly this is where an extraction fan protruded to allow air circulation.

Note too that the wonky grooves are reminiscent of trunking/ 'chasing' methods used in electrical installation, where by sections of wall are 'chased' out into channels, to receive power cables. Note also the equally spaced holes that frame the alcove, as if bolts or rivets were once fitted to receive a mounting frame to hold the machine in place.

And what sort of machine was it? Likely this was a central hub of some kind, anything from a transformer to Tele-visual communication point. Who knows. If it was a machine, it was the focal point for something. Much like our present day methods of centralising technology for a particular purpose to suit the needs of a community. Maybe it was just a ATM that spat out gold inca coins, or a terminal to buy plane tickets. Shit it could have been a snack vending machine for all I know.

But the point is, this alcove was designed for something slightly more important than mere shelving for gold statues anyway.

Which is probably what it ended up being used for in later centuries. Any trace of its electrical origins whittled away over the vast passing of time. All electrical devices contain metals of value and the contents of this particular alcove would have been stripped in the latter years in the wake of some social, or economic upheaval.

Note too the damage to the blocks, as if thieves, or scrap merchants had ripped out all the guts of the machine, damaging the stone work in the process. Its component parts recycled, melted down perhaps into more primitive weaponry (such as swords) to fight some war amid tribes, who had long forgotten their ancestral (and technologically advanced) roots.

All that said. Maybe it is just a stupid alcove for display purposes after all. But who knows, in these present times of civil unrest, with our society on the brink of nuclear annihilation, maybe you'll live long enough to see your old VHS tapes mistaken for godly deities by the post-apocalyptic baby boomers of the near future ...

Piss Artists Impression