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This is my weekly newspaper column, published today. Can anyone relate?
Also available online at:
www.cumberlink.com/articles/2008/03/20/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis37.txt
By Rich Lewis, Sentinel Columnist, March 20, 2008
Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:19 AM EDT
We visited my brother in New Hampshire last week, and since he has a large collection of movies, we decided to bring DVDs as gifts and to watch during our stay.
I was looking for the kind of fantasy, adventure and science fiction movies that we both enjoy and quickly settled on two recent releases I figured he hadn’t seen and that I had liked: “Sunshine” and “The Fountain.”
But then a third title caught my eye and something in me said, “You have to get this.”
But another part of me said, “No way. That movie is 40 years old. He wouldn’t want to see it again.”
In truth, I was afraid that I didn’t want to see it again.
But in the end, I plucked the two-disc special edition of “2001: A Space Odyssey” from the shelf. I just couldn’t resist.
I have loved many movies in my lifetime but no movie ever made a deeper, more lasting impression on me than “2001.” I saw it five or six times in the few weeks after it was released in April 1968. And more times after that.
It was a grand, beautiful, mysterious experience — the perfect movie for the 1960s, when so many of us were searching for, if you’ll pardon the expression, the meaning of life.
I remember spending long hours with my friends trying to explain the movie, to understand its message, to figure out what it all meant.
My fear was that seeing it again would ruin these memories — that it would seem outdated, silly and, worst of all, boring. That it would be like climbing aboard an amusement-park ride that thrilled me as child but now was revealed as just a plastic tea-cup going around in very slow circles.
It didn’t turn out that way.
My wife, my brother and I were glued to the screen for the entire two-and-a-half hours. The encounters with the mysterious monolith set to Gyorgy Ligeti’s hair-raising music; the gorgeous docking sequence choreographed to Strauss’s “Blue Danube” waltz; the murderous HAL 9000 computer; the psychedelic journey through the “star gate”; the transformation of a depleted and dying old man into a “star child” who, drifting toward Earth, seems to hold in his tiny hands a promise for the future of mankind.
It all still works.
And I’m not alone in thinking so. One respected movie site ranks it as the fourth greatest movie of all time. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it as the 22nd greatest of all time — and in 2007 moved it up to 15.
I thought briefly about writing my column about all this but couldn’t really justify it — until something happened this week that was too much of a coincidence to ignore.
Legendary science-fiction writer, inventor and futurist Arthur C. Clarke died on Tuesday at age 90.
Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for “2001: A Space Odyssey,” based on Clarke’s short story, “The Sentinel.” And Clarke was Kubrick’s hand-picked, close collaborator in the actual making of the movie — there to ensure that “2001” was as scientifically accurate as possible.
It was Clarke’s vision of space exploration that informed and inspired the movie — that raised it beyond a mere sci-fi adventure to an exploration of the wonders that might wait beyond the surface of the Earth.
“2001” is fiction — we won’t find “monoliths” or be reborn as a new species after journeying through a wormhole.
But as metaphor it is powerful and provocative — a reminder that wonders await those who push the boundaries of experience, seek our new frontiers, are open to the possibility of amazement.
Clarke embodied all this. A tireless advocate for space exploration, his influence was worldwide and profound. As co-creator of “2001”, he certainly had a profound influence on me.
The sad part is that our country no longer shares Clarke’s passion for space exploration. Back in October 2003, I wrote a column lamenting this very point, explaining that our national excitement over putting a man on the moon in 1969 had slowly faded into indifference.
“Americans generally don’t think very highly of space exploration anymore, if they think of it at all,” I wrote then. “But that’s our problem — a sign perhaps of a tiring national spirit.”
That hasn’t changed in the last five years. Oh sure, in January 2004 President Bush unveiled an ambitious plan to return Americans to the moon by 2020 and use the mission as a stepping-stone for future manned trips to Mars and beyond.
“Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea,” Bush said in that speech. “We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit.”
Nice words, but he’s never mentioned it again, as far as I know.
So here’s to “2001” — an enduring invitation to adventure beyond our own planet. See it, whether again or for the first time.
And here’s to Arthur Clarke, who dedicated his life and talent to his belief that “the only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”
Rich Lewis’ e-mail address is:
rlcolumn@comcast.net.
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