Discuss: Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Filed under: Classics, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Warner Brothers
We studied it in high school, which made it amazingly boring. I tried again a few years later, but just couldn't get into it. Saw it on the big screen about ten years ago and finally got what everyone was raving about ... but still the film didn't really "connect" with me in any powerful way. But then a few nights ago, I sat down with my awesome 2-disc special edition of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and was blown away as if I'd never even heard of it before. Thousands of writers much cleverer than I have devoted a billion words to this very fine film, but after watching it earlier this week, I was struck by how simple the story actually was. I mean, a film is a work of art, and as such each viewer will have their own interpretation of the experience, but if we're talking about the oh-so-confusing and deliciously ambiguous nature of the plot, um, here's what I saw:A. Early man is little more than an animal before a mysterious object appears on their planet and signifies the next step forward: The creation of tools, which immediately leads to the creation of weapons, and then we (awesomely) jump-cut to millions of years later. Our first weapon has evolved into our ultimate weapon: A nuclear arsenal poised ominously in outer space.
B. Then we (slowly but very coolly) discover that another mysterious object has been discovered beneath the surface of the moon. When modern man places his hand on the second "monolith," a signal between the moon and Jupiter is opened. Looks like man is officially "ready" for his next step.
C. The most memorable part of the film is the Jupiter journey. That's where two human astronauts are forced to match wits with the ultimate tool: a virtually infallible computer that also happens to have a pretty snotty attitude. What began as a bone has become a super-computer, and it's right about now that mankind has allowed its tools to become just a little too powerful. The computer decides that humans are a variable too volatile too ignore, so in an effort to maintain the Jupiter mission, HAL kills everyone except for one clever astronaut who destroys his ultimate tool just as the journey is ending.
D. Just over Jupiter our one remaining human finds the mysterious object yet again, somehow enters into it, travels through numerous dimensions, and ultimately transforms into the next grade on the evolutionary scale: It's the star-child, baby, and just as the movie ends the being is about to land on Earth.
That's pretty much it, right?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
10-25-2008 @ 8:46PM
massed gadgets said...
i owe my ventures into film making, personal enlightenment, and exploration of self awareness on this world/existence to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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10-25-2008 @ 8:13PM
Mike De Luca said...
That's it. Obtuse, my ass! According to the Arthur C. Clarke novel, written concurrently with the screenplay, the folks planting the monoliths are a superior race of extraterrestrials. Intelligent, heady stuff that redefined the genre on film. Suck on that, creationism! Kubrick in the house.
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10-27-2008 @ 2:36AM
EatingPie said...
Kubrick and Clarke had a major disagreement over the origin of the monoliths, and Kubrick went his way in the movie, Clarke went his in the book. So quoting the book doesn't really settle anything for the movie.
Now, If you can show me where, in the MOVIE, we have definitive evidence that *aliens* placed the monoliths, let's hear it!
As it stands, God placing the monoliths as a catalyst/test of evolution is equally plausible. So Creationism can come back in from the rain if it wants.
And more importantly...
WATCH THE Blu-ray!!
This movie is INCREDIBLE in HD, and 2001 is one of those movies that just shines (the quality is so good, you can see "stitches" in the background matte painting in the ape scene).
-Pie
10-25-2008 @ 8:20PM
Dutch said...
http://www.kubrick2001.com/ is all I have to say.. So tell us what we've won?!! "We shape the tools then the tools shape us" -McLuhan
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10-25-2008 @ 8:27PM
Mijn_laars said...
http://www.kubrick2001.com/ for those into tools and interputations. Me, quoting McLuhan- We shape our tools then they shape us. and so it goes Buck Rogers....
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10-25-2008 @ 9:27PM
Paul Kulik said...
Bingo! You have nailed it right on the head! IMHO .
I have always believed that this film should be shown at the Met as a work of visual art, along side Jackson Pollock's works.
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10-25-2008 @ 10:00PM
mezzanine said...
I've seen it once, and I sort of "got it", although I was more into the aesthetic design instead of the story. And I have serious doubts the next step in evolution will take me down a 15 minute psychedelic tunnel, but I guess being turned into a giant baby makes sense.
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10-25-2008 @ 10:21PM
janebwag said...
I am not a film maker or an artist, but I am a film viewer and this is one of my favorite movies of all time. I watch it about once a year and am fascinated from begining to end.
The Blue Danube scene is classic. Kubrick had great skill matching music to his movie scences.
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10-25-2008 @ 10:32PM
George Myers said...
I read that the scene of a board of scientists discussing intelligent life in the universe that Arthur C. Clarke was left on the cutting room floor and Stanley Kubrick decided in the interest of the film left out. It was said to have been the opening, so it was reported. I saw it on a perforated screen and the sound speakers were on a scaffold behind the screen. I wonder if it was dedicated to Richard Strauss who wrote the music used in the score and wrote "Metamorphoses" about the rubble that Germany became at the end of WW II.
Today it was reported after sixty years, trade has begun again in Kashmir between Pakistan and India. Maybe India probe on the way to the Moon will find a "Sentinel".
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10-25-2008 @ 11:42PM
Jordan M said...
favorite movie of all time. i think you pretty much nailed it, interpretation wise.
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10-26-2008 @ 1:09AM
pixls said...
i really liked the movie, but i don't really know why, it was very good because of the visual effects and the pure new-ness of it. nothing had been done like it before, and still nothing has come close to it. the first time i ever saw it was on dvd, borrowed from teh library, i don't think the story was excellent, it was intriguing but what really got me into it was the intensity of it, the music drove the visuals drove the music. it fit perfectly, it flowed perfectly, it was an epic integration of audio and visual.
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10-26-2008 @ 1:55AM
shadowracer said...
You can't watch 2001 on DVD. You need to see it on Blu-ray with a scope set up to really appreciate it.
You guys know that in the beginning of the film you are looking directly at the monolith right?
It's a cinema screen. It's a film about films, the sci-fi stuff is just there mechanically.
And the reason why it's so good is because it makes you think. How many film can you say that about. And I mean ones that last decades, that you can spend hours and hours
pondering.
No Oscars for best Director/Picture FTW?! If one film would be allowed to go back and get its awards, it should be this one.
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10-26-2008 @ 2:41AM
gottacook said...
I was lucky enough to see 2001 in its Cinerama form, in spring 1968 when I was 11, at the Fox Theater in center-city Philadelphia (gone since 1980). The two best books about 2001 came out in the early 1970s: The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (edited by Jerome Agel) and Clarke's The Lost Worlds of 2001. The latter includes discussions of unused story directions he and Kubrick considered, sometimes in the form of unused segments of Clarke's 2001 novel. I highly recommend both books if you can find them.
I've never seen 2001 on home video and I'm not sure that I'd want to. For me it's a special occasion, such as the brief U.S. tour of a restored print in late fall 2001 (which I saw at the Uptown in D.C.).
(Oddly enough, TV Land is showing Saturday Night Fever at the moment, and the 2001 Odyssey dance club was just mentioned in dialogue.)
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10-26-2008 @ 3:51AM
Cookie said...
I saw 2001 the first time when I was a 16-year old SF-buff and I fast-forwarded big stretches of the film. But then I saw it on a big screen, and then again, and it's been my absolute favourite film ever since. "The ultimate trip" indeed.
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10-26-2008 @ 12:30PM
Martin Conaghan said...
Monkey. Man. Machine. Monolith.
Since the dawn of time, from ape to scientist, mankind has striven to reach the unattainable.
The numinous mysteries of the univers cannot be divined by technology.
Kubrick was a genius. 2001 is a work of art.
I pity anyone who has not experienced this movie on a cinema screen.
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10-26-2008 @ 12:44PM
Richard said...
the thing that makes 2001 so great is that it's one of the only movies ive seen that really maintains narrative continuity using images only. there's really not much dialogue, only a few scenes with music: everything that is 'plot' is established through the images on screen. it's an unbelievable achievement that, when coupled with the book, raises some of the most amazing questions about humanity, evolution, extra terrestrials, and time.
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10-26-2008 @ 2:27PM
Dan North said...
It's an amazing film, but it didn't truly make sense until I saw it on a big screen. All those lingering shots of spacecraft don't have the same impact if they're reduced to little things on TV in the corner of the room.
I blogged about 2001 recently, which some of you might just find interesting: http://drnorth.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/2001-this-way-up/
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10-26-2008 @ 2:23PM
cubitfox said...
By far the greatest film of all time if not one of the greatest works of art in mankind. Its a testament to the power of humanity, the power of art, the power of film, and the power of existence.
When interpreting it, most people just use it to back their already established beliefs (religion mainly), when in reality its much more enigmatic. Its not doubting creationism nor confirming higher powers, its just an exploration at its most basic form: indescribable enough to puzzle us, but human enough to connect.
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10-26-2008 @ 2:44PM
Peter Hall said...
In the immortal words of Captain Hazel "Hank" Murphy, "I wonder what the space baby thinks about all this..."
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10-26-2008 @ 6:10PM
Craig said...
@dutch: That's a great site (you beat me to it, posting the link), and I implore anyone reading this to go check it out.
I could hardly believe when this was on TCM the other night and they mentioned it's the film's 40th birthday.
Wow.
I saw it opening week -- in Cinerama no less! (at the Syosset Theater on Long Island) -- when I was just 10 years old. (I recall going to Howard Johnson's after the movie and there being 2001 placemats.) It fast became one of my all-time favorite films. The beauty of The Blue Danube during the space-docking sequence, the fascinating authentic feel of it all ... and damned if I wasn't determined to figure out that incomprehensible ending!
Back then, 2001 seemed so far into the future ... hell, even 1984 seemed a lifetime away. But like with so many great films, every subsequent viewing is more enjoyable and reveals yet another layer of the onion.
It was among the very first VHS tapes I ever bought and one of the very first DVDs I ever bought. I just picked up the two-disc special edition the other day and can't wait to dig into the special features.
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