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Salient: Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31 Number 19 August 6, 1968

"Daisy, Daisy . . ."

"Daisy, Daisy . . ."

You have never seen anything like it. For the kids, no doubt the August 9 NZ-wide release may prove a damp squib —during its nearly 3 hours, there is just over 40 minutes of dialogue! As the gargantuan cylindrical "Hilton Space Station No. 5" revolves serenely around the earth, the complete and original Johann Strauss Blue Danube Waltz is heard. The film abounds in natural humour and pathos inside the monstrous vehicles, Hal 9000, the human computer with feelings, goes mad, and with his silky voice says: "Look Dave, I can see you're upset about this". Circuit by circuit is withdrawn and his computer-nerve goes. He says, "I'm afraid," and after reciting his birth and history sings "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do," winding down to a basso profundo growl.

In space on one of the "stations", there is a Howard Johnson earthlight room, a colour transmission from a BBC-12, a Bell Telephone visual style (coins are asked to be inserted), and a traveller looks worriedly at the 10 long commandments to be obeyed in using the zero gravity toilet.

The music Kubrick uses is of undeniable importance. In the opening sequence of the sun rising in the void of the universe and during the long prologue "The Dawn of Man", we hear the opening bars to Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra. Unthinking nature is what the motif expressed by Strauss means; corresponding to the source of the composition, where, magnificently exemplified (the sun as unchanging nature), is the monumental orchestral crescendo, that is used again and again in the film.

There are excerpts from Khachaturian's Gayeneh Suite and many strange and evocative sections from Gyorgy Ligeti's (instrumental) Atmospheres and (vocal) Mass.

Youngblood concludes his wonderful rave: "Finally comes the beautiful sequence where Dullea wrinkled and old finds himself in a strange colonial room with a luminous floor. Seated at a table eating off a silver plate is another image of himself, this time even more wrinkled and older. This image looks toward the bed, in which is lying even an older image of Dullea—so old and emaciated, in fact, that he incredibly resembles the humanoid apes in the "Dawn Of Man" prologue. The primitive creature reaches out timidly with his palsied hand and we see the huge metallic monolith standing in the middle of the room.

Suddenly there is that timeless image of the two globes with the sun bursting over them, and the old humanoid creature has transformed into a foetus with huge eyes drifting through space as one tiny element of the cosmos. The space traveller has discovered the secrets of life, the essence of the cosmos, and thus obliterates himself."