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It's not Clarke's 2001, it's Kubrick's.
The sad thing is that the symbolism isn't that obscure or hard, and is well within anyone's grasp. The sci-fi element motivated Clarke, but Kubrick had a deeper agenda. He crafted the sci-fi meticulously in an almost OCD perfectionism, but this is an inner dream landscape picture and as such it's more straightforward than so many people seem to think. The crazy literature that has blossomed obscures it.
But if you spell it out (as really good artists don't want), then all those who don't get it will say 'Oh everyone projects what they want into it. I don't know that, so it can't be true'. That can be paraphrased as, 'We know everything. If something appears that we don't know, it therefore is nonsense. If someone explains the nonsense, he's clearly subjectively projecting'. Which is why it's not worth it.
90% of art reviewing is irrelevant, but artists enjoy the discussion and the projection. There's just about zero usefulness to a director, writer, designer etc. In anything that run-of-the-mill reviewers and critics write that would help an artist one iota to create a single shot of a movie. But if people want to know about cinema they go to the reviewers. Inadvertently, they then shut themselves out from the real process, but because there are so MANY reviewers, they think they're in good company.
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Posted: |
Jul 11, 2017 - 9:13 AM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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Anyone here that doesn't understand anything in 2001, tell me what it is and I'll explain it to you.
Okay, Dr. Zaius: How about everything from the "psychedelic light show" (yes, I know it's a stargate) onward through the fetus floating above Earth.
Everything before that made perfect sense to me. But then, maybe like most good films, it's the "journey", not some symbolic meaning, that makes it unique and enjoyable.
The monolith you see floating around Jupiter is supposed to be a gigantic version of what was buried on the moon (which was just an alien device to let them know that humanity, which they helped jump start four million years before, had reached a certain level of development), and is an anchor for the alien's "Star Gate." which I've always assumed is like some kind of wormhole in space. Bowman's pod gets pulled into it and the "psychedelic light show" is the trip he takes through this corridor across the universe to wherever the alien's home planet is in a far distant galaxy (again, I assume). There, Bowman is kept in this room which the aliens have created from his mind and he lives out the rest of his life there, however long that is (could be decades), which he perceives as only a few moments. My guess is that the aliens find his present human self somewhat amusing, as I think I hear alien laughter as he looks around the room. Eventually, he dies and through some process that I guess the aliens help with, he is reborn as the "Star Child," a higher form of life closer to the alien life that has been monitoring human evolution for millions of years. He looks like a baby only because that is how he sees his newborn self. Is he supposed to literally look like a giant baby? I doubt it. He's more likely some form, as Mr. Spock would say, of "Pure Energy," only sentient. Remember that the Clarke short story that was the basis for 2001 was titled "The Sentinel." Get it? A little play on words there.
2001 is basically an attempt to posit a "scientific" explanation of God and of what is Man and his ultimate destiny. Is it supposed to be taken seriously? I would guess no more than anything that the world's major religions have to say on the subject.
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As I may or may not have posted on other threads devoted to “2001”, I don’t think you can really read enough meaning into the film. It is loaded with meaning. Overflowing and going up to the brim over and over again with intent and meaning. From the irreconcilable to the easily identifiable to the deliberately obscure to the sardonic humor of many scenes – it is, to say the very least, full of meaning. The documentary about Kubrick, “Stanley’s Boxes”, gives ample proof that he obsessed on meanings and implications of just about everything in the world around him – collecting facts and charts and symbols and thousands of pieces of ephemera about the universe in which he found himself. Cataloging the meaning of it all. That said, my response to the film has changed over the years. I honestly don’t think you can have a true appreciation of the film unless you’ve seen it at some point in Cinerama or on a huge screen with decent stereo. I first saw it for my 16th birthday at the Cooper Cinerama in Denver. The Cooper was brand new – and the experience is the single most impressive viewing of a film that I’ve ever had. Everything was perfect. The film staggered me back then – as it did my Mom and Sister who can still recall the experience (they had to drive me to Denver from my home town, a four hour trip, to see the film). The next time I saw the film in a theater was in NYC where it had a 70mm engagement at a theater in the Times Square area (was it the old Rivoli or Criterion?). The projection and sound were far below what I’d experienced in Denver. I was struck during that later viewing by the film’s dark satire – how gleefully Kubrick punctured humanity’s progress as a species. The film’s humor (bathroom jokes no less!) really stood out for me in stark contrast to my previous impression of a somber epic.
The music, grandly majestic and often aggressively unpleasant when I was 16, now seemed wry and almost satirical at times.
Anyway, long story short, the film has changed with me over time. But, my gosh, is it ever meaningful!
I hesitate to add that I am not a cinema snob. I’ve been going to the movies for 65 years (my Mom went into labor with me while watching “The Greatest Show on Earth” in the 50’s). I have no real prejudices against one type of film vs another. I loved and still love Westerns, gangster films, Jerry Lewis films, the Three Stooges, Harryhausen, Hitchcock. Not so much Ford. I loved the development of movies in the late 60’s and early seventies. “The Wild Bunch” “Bonnie and Clyde” “The Graduate” – but never gave up my love of, say, Howard Hawks.
“2001” is, for me, a great film – one of the greatest. So sue me! And I understand completely that some folks dislike it. I’ve tried to get my best friends through screenings of “Stalker” or “Solaris” only to have us all go to dinner early. Yes, I love Tarkovsky, too.
It takes all kinds in this cockeyed caravan.
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Posted: |
Jul 12, 2017 - 4:06 AM
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jenkwombat
(Member)
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The monolith you see floating around Jupiter is supposed to be a gigantic version of what was buried on the moon (which was just an alien device to let them know that humanity, which they helped jump start four million years before, had reached a certain level of development), and is an anchor for the alien's "Star Gate." which I've always assumed is like some kind of wormhole in space. Bowman's pod gets pulled into it and the "psychedelic light show" is the trip he takes through this corridor across the universe to wherever the alien's home planet is in a far distant galaxy (again, I assume). There, Bowman is kept in this room which the aliens have created from his mind and he lives out the rest of his life there, however long that is (could be decades), which he perceives as only a few moments. My guess is that the aliens find his present human self somewhat amusing, as I think I hear alien laughter as he looks around the room. Eventually, he dies and through some process that I guess the aliens help with, he is reborn as the "Star Child," a higher form of life closer to the alien life that has been monitoring human evolution for millions of years. He looks like a baby only because that is how he sees his newborn self. Is he supposed to literally look like a giant baby? I doubt it. He's more likely some form, as Mr. Spock would say, of "Pure Energy," only sentient. Remember that the Clarke short story that was the basis for 2001 was titled "The Sentinel." Get it? A little play on words there.
2001 is basically an attempt to posit a "scientific" explanation of God and of what is Man and his ultimate destiny. Is it supposed to be taken seriously? I would guess no more than anything that the world's major religions have to say on the subject.
Thank you, RoryR. That makes it clearer.
Now, I'll have to dig out my DVD and watch this wonderful and unique film yet again with this fresh perspective.
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Posted: |
Jul 12, 2017 - 11:59 AM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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The monolith you see floating around Jupiter is supposed to be a gigantic version of what was buried on the moon (which was just an alien device to let them know that humanity, which they helped jump start four million years before, had reached a certain level of development), and is an anchor for the alien's "Star Gate." which I've always assumed is like some kind of wormhole in space. Bowman's pod gets pulled into it and the "psychedelic light show" is the trip he takes through this corridor across the universe to wherever the alien's home planet is in a far distant galaxy (again, I assume). There, Bowman is kept in this room which the aliens have created from his mind and he lives out the rest of his life there, however long that is (could be decades), which he perceives as only a few moments. My guess is that the aliens find his present human self somewhat amusing, as I think I hear alien laughter as he looks around the room. Eventually, he dies and through some process that I guess the aliens help with, he is reborn as the "Star Child," a higher form of life closer to the alien life that has been monitoring human evolution for millions of years. He looks like a baby only because that is how he sees his newborn self. Is he supposed to literally look like a giant baby? I doubt it. He's more likely some form, as Mr. Spock would say, of "Pure Energy," only sentient. Remember that the Clarke short story that was the basis for 2001 was titled "The Sentinel." Get it? A little play on words there.
2001 is basically an attempt to posit a "scientific" explanation of God and of what is Man and his ultimate destiny. Is it supposed to be taken seriously? I would guess no more than anything that the world's major religions have to say on the subject.
Thank you, RoryR. That makes it clearer.
Now, I'll have to dig out my DVD and watch this wonderful and unique film yet again with this fresh perspective.
In order to get the proper perspective of the times you need to also be on LSD.
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One detail Kubrick presented, which has been abandoned by virtually every outer space movie since, is the total vacuum of space. No sounds can be heard. None. (I'm not counting his use of a music score, for all you quibblers out there...)
Later sci-fi, most notably all the STAR WARS films, all have sound effects of engines, explosions, etc.
The original publicity campaign slogan for ALIEN was, "In space no one can hear you scream." And I seem to remember Scott used silence in the space sequences. But hardly anyone else seems to have done.
In 2001 this was novel enough that now, when space ships make noise, I find it jarring.
Kubrick was fond of stylistic innovation. For BARRY LYNDON he figured out how to film using only actual candlelight, something novel at the time that has become a convention ever since. (In fact Ridley Scott's first feature THE DUELLISTS looks like a direct copy of Kubrick's style.)
BTW: Some time ago there was an announcement that a miniseries would be filmed based on Kubrick's screenplay on the life of Napoleon. Any further developments since?
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Posted: |
Jul 12, 2017 - 6:45 PM
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Metryq
(Member)
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John B. Archibald wrote: One detail Kubrick presented, which has been abandoned by virtually every outer space movie since, is the total vacuum of space. No sounds can be heard.
That was a stylistic choice, although I've heard some people try to pitch it as one the ways 2001 is so "realistic." Kubrick had total silence in some shots, music in others (The Blue Danube, Gayane Ballet Suite), or sound effects like an astronaut's breathing even when the POV is not that of the astronaut. (The entire AE-35 sequence with Bowman features his breathing and the hiss of his life support pack.) There is no rigid rule on which variation goes with which shot—except Kubrick's own emotional juxtapositions.
The short-lived series Firefly had several occasions when sound effects were not used in vacuum—music score only, as in 2001.
And despite Roddenberry's comments about swishes in space and Earthbound audiences expecting sounds, Star Trek TOS also had several instances of score only in vacuum shots featuring phasers firing and ships exploding.
The movie Contact lapsed into silence during the opening montage after "backing out" of Earth's radio bubble.
For that matter, I can't count the number of times feet running over gravel have been partially or totally muted when some commando team is sneaking up to take out the sentries. "Damn, those guys are really good!"
So let's not get too carried away about sound not carrying in a vacuum. One additional note: older movies or cartoons might have "spacey music" that sounds like the kind of ethereal radio noises we pick up from the synchrotron radiation of planets. So what does a vacuum sound like?
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Posted: |
Jul 14, 2017 - 5:06 AM
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By: |
Metryq
(Member)
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Jenkwombat wrote: but the disc FROZE UP
Sorry to hear that, Jenkwombat. But I have bad news. I've had many optical discs "fade away" on me over time. Some freeze up or skip, as you described, others simply fail to mount at all. And the disc may be entirely free of any scuffs or blemishes. Since you said you "found" your copy of 2001, that suggests to me that it is one of your older discs.
The percentage of discs (recordable, or commercially pressed) that have failed or faded away on me is very small, yet frequent enough to influence my habits. This is one reason that I rip even transient discs (from Netflix or the library) into my media center computer. Encoding software Handbrake will trip out on a faulty disc so that I know about the problem instead of getting the surprise when I'm already sitting down enjoying the movie. There are ways to cope with problem discs, but finding out before viewing is preferable to me.
I guess it's time to buy a new copy, or at least sign one out from the library.
Future generations will know very little about us when they open the time capsule and find a bunch of blank, silvery discs.
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Posted: |
Jul 16, 2017 - 8:40 PM
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By: |
Clavius
(Member)
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Solium wrote:
The Moonbus didn't have any obvious forward propulsion, but it did have lifting thruster's. (way to many and way to large for the Moon!) But hey, it looked cool. I think the lack of forward propulsion (rear rockets) were the causality of production limitations/oversight. Originally the Moonbus was going to ride across the lunar surface on tracks.
The thrusters are gimbaled, so that they point not straight down, but are angled in the opposite direction to where you want the Moonbus to go. Since there are no aerodynamic forces to rely on (i.e. lift from wings slicing through air), vertical thrust is vastly more important than horizontal thrust, because it's the only way you can stay up.
As for the film's acting, Kubrick wanted Dullea and Lockwood to play their parts in as bland and dehumanized a manner as possible, because it was his intention that HAL be the most human character in the film. And, indeed, HAL is the only character with motivations for his actions that transcend mere reaction to the demands of external circumstance.
The special effects are as great as they are because, while spectacular, they are, at the same time, subtle and, of course, entirely hand-crafted. No mean feat, and something modern filmmakers, with the tools of digital imaging at their disposal, do not understand.
"2001" is NOT a Cinerama film, in the sense that "how the West Was Won" or "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" are Cinerama films. It was co-financed by Cinerama Corporation, which is why their logo appears on some of the film's advertising, but it was shot in flat 65mm Super Panavision.
Is the film boring? There can be no more subjective question or answer. The film IS stately, no getting around that. But a lot of the antipathy, or apathy, toward the film since its release is primarily the result of the film's eschewing of many, but not all, melodramatic conventions (the most melodramatic moment being the end of the first half, when we're given a POV of HAL's reading of Bowman and Poole's lips -- a genuinely chilling moment, probably the only real emotional moment in the whole movie), depriving audiences of the emotional road map they've come to expect in drama. The film's also not actually about what it SEEMS to be about, which is even more disorienting. There are hidden messages, and it revolves around a central irony that, in retrospect, most people seeing it are probably never going to get unless it's pointed out to them.
Lastly, the film WAS released in its longer 2-hours and 41-minute length, and played for week at that running time in its initial roadshow engagements in New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles, before the prints were recalled and trimmed to the current 2:19. I saw it at the Loew's Capitol Theatre in Times Square during that first week.
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Posted: |
Jul 16, 2017 - 9:46 PM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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At one point, HAL goes over the edge in trying to prise out of Bowman any information he might have regarding the "thing" that had been dug up on the moon, and how much credence the astronaut had given the story. I mean, that is a "wow" moment. Of course, Bowman misses the real reason HAL has brought up that particular idea, by misattributing the computer's motivation as having something to do with working up the "crew psychology report." There's no inkling that anything is wrong at all with HAL thus far. What was the computer doing at this point? The suggestion is that HAL was projecting anxiety about the crew potentially knowing something only it had any authority to know. It was checking to see if they knew anything whatsoever about the taboo secret being jealously kept under lock and key. Like, it could tell them about the 4 million year old Monolith, but then it would have to kill them! If there is any plot from which this literal device is directly plugged, then surely this has gotta be it?
Later, in the pod in private conversation with Bowman, Poole can't put his finger on it but he definitely senses there is something strange about HAL - mainly due to the computer's fault prediction about the AE35 unit's supposed 100% failure not actually occurring - indicating HAL has made an imperfect judgement call. The two astronauts are concerned that HAL will overhear their talking about the apparently PC notion of disconnecting the computer in plain view, should it prove to be malfunctioning. The point being the crew psychology reporting goes both ways.
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Haven't had volume issues with my other Blu Rays, so it's not the player. 
