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Prologue: The Odyssey
The twentieth century produced two great latter-day iterations of HomersOdyssey.
Serialized from 1918 to 1920, it was published in full in 1922.
Keir Dullea in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.Credit: Everett Collection
Never seen directly, they swoop down periodically from their galactic Olympus to intervene in human affairs.
The instrument of their power, a rectangular black monolith, appears at key turning points in human destiny.
A giant spacecraft,Discovery, is sent to investigate.
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While parallels withThe Odysseyarent as thoroughly woven into the structure of2001as they are inUlysses, they certainly exist.
The sole surviving astronaut, mission commander Dave Bowman, then has to fight the computer to the death.
Anostos, or homecoming, was as necessary to Kubricks and ClarkesOdysseyas it was to Homers.
In Clarke, Kubrick had found the most balanced and productive creative partnership of his career.
At2001s release in 1968, Kubrick was thirty-nine, the same age as Joyce whenUlysseswas being serialized.
He was at the pinnacle of his abilities, having already made two of the twentieth centurys great films.
Each was a devastating indictment of human behavior as expressed through the military mind-set.
A resounding critical and commercial success, it set the stage for the large-scale studio support necessary to realize2001.
All the while, the director and his team pioneered a variety of innovative new cinematic techniques.
Major plot points remained in flux well into filming.
Significant scenes were modified beyond recognition or tossed altogether as their moment on the schedule arrived.
A documentary prelude featuring leading scientists discussing extraterrestrial intelligence was shot but discarded.
Giant sets were built, found wanting, and rejected.
A transparent two-ton Plexiglas monolith was produced at huge expense and then shelved as inadequate.
Throughout, Kubrick and Clarke remained locked in dialogue.
Clarke was fifty when2001came out.
When Kubrick first contacted him early in 1964, he had already enjoyed an exceptionally prolific career.
Apart from his fictional and nonfictional output, he had played a noteworthy role in the history of technology.
As the central utopian credo of the space age, Tsiolkovskys pronouncement would find direct expression in2001s final scenes.
Most of the citys leading critics dismissed the film, some in personal and humiliating terms.
Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, possibly the greatest filmmaker of the twentieth century, found2001repellant.
He had a solution, though: it should be run through the chopper, heartlessly.
Put simply, it changed how we think about ourselves.
In this way, too, it easily withstands comparison to James Joyces masterpiece.
In both of these modernistOdysseys, audiences were asked to accept new ways of receiving narrative.
Each was highly influential, with innumerable successor works striving to equal their philosophical breadth and technical virtuosity.
Neither has yet been surpassed.
