Sunday, 25 September 2016

2010:
The Year We Make Contact
(1984)

RATING:60%
FORMAT:Cinema

Cold War in Space

More of an homage to Stanley Kubrick’s earlier film 2001: A Space Odyssey than a film in its own right.

Lacking much of the allegorical meat of the first film this tries hard to be literary rather than cinematic - as per Arthur Clarke’s novels - and ends up falling between two stools. Clarke’s drippy Hippie outlook on life appears naive and childlike and ruins an otherwise enjoyable movie with excellent special-effects.

This is the kind of film making that is all too perfunctory and lacks a soul although it tries its best, but was never likely to equal the original in either breadth or depth.

This film also oddly tries to provide a gloss for the first film and a kind of explanation and an exegesis. The attempt to reduce something quite mysterious to a facile explanation contradicts the potential for wonder and awe that cinema possesses and depletes the story of human potential we are allegedly witnessing.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.