2001: A Space Odyssey

def wanna read this though, there's so much mystique around kubrick and this movie in particular that a nuts-and-bolts 'here's how we did it' sounds fascinating

I saw it last night on the big screen for the second time. each time I see it, a little bit more of it clicks into place but I never understand the ending. I'd love to read this book

dog latin, there's plenty written and recorded about the ending (not to mention the Clarke novel-ization)

yeah I figured I should finally read up more on it

SPOILERSSSSS!!!!!!!11

The final scenes of the film seemed more metaphorical than realistic. Will you discuss them -- or would that be part of the "road map" you're trying to avoid?

No, I don't mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is, straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man's first baby steps into the universe -- a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there's a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system.

When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he's placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny.

That is what happens on the film's simplest level. Since an encounter with an advanced interstellar intelligence would be incomprehensible within our present earthbound frames of reference, reactions to it will have elements of philosophy and metaphysics that have nothing to do with the bare plot outline itself.

An Interview with Stanley Kubrick (1969)
by Joseph Gelmis
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html

beat me to it

This literal explanation doesn't really do the film any favours though, it somehow just turns it into the banal sci-fi flick it's patently not trying to be. I don't think the ending needs an "explanation" as such, the imagery is powerful enough on its own.

SK says the same

but as far as plot goes, that's it

love that they don't show the interstellar intelligence. this is the most important decision in the film imo. certainly having an alien looking creature explain "We made this hotel room for you" would take away all the mystery (as well as nail down the ending from a more symbolic/archetypal exploration to a linear narrative plot). by not personifying it, the film allows your mind to work on a more abstract, subtle, even spiritual level.

dog latin, did the new print look noticeably different? i'm taking it this screening was part of the official 'unrestored' presentations?

the new Nolan-approved print looks like it has more of the original 60s warmth in this comparison..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1JIkK7-fUI

ah I figured the zoo part okay. yeah that makes sense.

i really enjoyed the ape parts, seeing them cohabiting as rough equals of their fellow leaf-eating mammals before having to cower from dangerous predators; encountering other tribes but ultimately leaving each other alone without serious violence.
And then this Hobbesian turnaround once they come into contact with the monolith. They become warlike, carnivorous and violent towards each other.
They learn to use (or wield) tools as weapons, and so in the same way the monolith is described as an 'artifact' so is the bone/spaceship.
So going by Kubrick's answer above, it's possible that the beings who sent the monoliths are actually an advanced, time-bending version of humankind influencing their own betterment, their own existence, in this millenia-spanning recursive move.
And in a nice flourish we're made to ask what these beings are like. Are they benign and peaceful beings? Or is the monolith a forbidden fruit, a poisoned gift from Leviathan that encourages warlike, tribalistic behaviour?
Then going to other parts of the film, this is all reflected by the calculated cold war that takes place first between the US and Russia, and later the astronauts and Hal.
Hal, is an artefact and also as much a projection of humanity as the humans are a projection of the Starbeings. Hal has one interest in mind: furthering his own existence at the expense of all others. For him - for the astronauts, for the US embassy, for the Russians, the ape-men, possibly the Starchild - it's a tribal kill-or-be-killed solution. Survival of the fittest. The possibility of collaboration, of cooperation, is never considered. Instead, as the astronauts agree, there is no other choice but to try to shut Hal down.
It could be fair to say that a little bit of the monolith's influence has been passed on to Hal. He appears to exhibit pride in being without error. When he 'malfunctions', is it really a malfunction or a simply a low-down conniving trick? Is he - an advanced AI who seems to be able to experience pride, pain and fear - at once a prototype for the future human race who would eventually be created by the Starbeings, but also a sort-of test to see if humanity had become smart enough to reach Jupiter?

sorry I didn't expect to type all that out, I was trying to piece together what I'd made of it myself in my head although I'm sure it's all been said before in one way or another

piscesx, I can't really tell you about the print I'm afraid. I felt like the sound could have been better but it was a fairly small cinema and it was a bit trebly - especially the opening Strauss piece

Some of this guy's ideas are hooey (like pondering the significance of 237 shots following intermission), but some are not.

http://idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/film/2001_5.htm

Helps if you dig structuralism, I think.

xp: Unrestored looks a lot more like blue pigment degradation, than anything intended.

saw the new print a couple weeks ago. it's as gorgeous as you'd expect -- i could've happily seen it more than once. i think someone mentioned this on another thread but the lightshow at the end looks and feels better, more vivid and involving, than ever. (so effective that my poor friend that i dragged along, who'd never seen it before, told me she felt nauseous afterward.)

this film really gives you a lot of space to wonder about basically everything that happens in it. this time around, i found myself wondering how long dave is in the room at the end. i suppose i always assumed it was a dreamlike scenario where his transformation happened fairly quickly -- and kubrick seems to back that up by calling it "a timeless state" -- but i think you could also read it as happening to dave in real time, so he experiences it as growing old year after year in this isolated environment. an eerie thought. it's been too long since i read the clarke novel, so i can't remember if that's how it's portrayed there -- i recall that the novel spent a lot of time on the post-HAL journey to jupiter.

also, the more i read about the making of this movie the more i appreciate how brilliant a creation HAL is. i mean, think about it: he's a prop and a disembodied voice by an actor who wasn't told what any of his lines meant and never even got to meet the other actors. that's it. and yet HAL is probably one of the greatest characters in any movie. the way kubrick creates a sense of him as an actual person, so alive and fully present that it's actually devastating when he "dies," just by cutting to the close-up of his "face" at just the right moments, is probably the craziest and most unlikely accomplishment of the entire film.

this film really gives you a lot of space to wonder about basically everything that happens in it. this time around, i found myself wondering how long dave is in the room at the end. i suppose i always assumed it was a dreamlike scenario where his transformation happened fairly quickly -- and kubrick seems to back that up by calling it "a timeless state" -- but i think you could also read it as happening to dave in real time, so he experiences it as growing old year after year in this isolated environment. an eerie thought. it's been too long since i read the clarke novel, so i can't remember if that's how it's portrayed there -- i recall that the novel spent a lot of time on the post-HAL journey to jupiter.

It's effective in being temporally disorientating, even today when a lot of it looks a bit like the old Winamp 'Milkdrop' visual generator, I can never quite work out how long I've been watching it for.

i really love that "Space to wonder" take, J.D.! the deliberate pacing of everything is perfect for inducing a particular mindset.

last night i was thinking of the famous jump cut from the bone to the spaceship: there is a humor and a humility to it, the way we've been following this pretty linear storyline with the apes, then suddenly fast-forward thousands of years, only to stop pause and wonder at the ballet of spaceships drifting to the Blue Danube. it's funny cos in any other movie a jump cut will dive right back into the story.

yet here it's another 5-10 minutes before you even hear a human speak. it almost seems to suggest "Yeah nothing much has changed for the humans except the formal trappings so let's glory in those". it's a movie about Dave and Hal and their mission all that but that isn't the whole enchilada.

too many space threads

the space ballet always strikes me as kind of humorous and i'm never sure if that's the intention. is it because of the Blue Danube being played? would it seem different with different music?

seems to suggest "Yeah nothing much has changed..."

An additional element is that the satellite is supposedly a weapon. Someone, perhaps Clarke says this is the making of documentary. Maybe everyone knows this now but it put a different spin on it for me when I heard that.

So to speak.

That sequence (Floyd's journey and the moon monolith) is still part of THE DAWN OF MAN after all.

Certainly it would be different with the Alex North score that Kubrick ditched.

Or the explanatory voiceover that Kubrick ditched at the last minute.

Know I've mentioned it before, on this thread or elsewhere, but the BFI Film Classics on 2001 by Peter Kramer is very good, especially on the film's 'nuclear threat' subtext (again, present much more strongly in early drafts of the screenplay, and more prominent in the Clarke novel version).

The passive-aggressive chat with the Russians in the Earthlight lounge is a companion to the rivalry of the man-ape tribes.

yeah, morbs otm - the only difference between human and ape is the sophistication of human tools

An additional element is that the satellite is supposedly a weapon

Yeah, several are shown, including the US Air Force, China, Germany and Egypt(!). The USAF one is the first one visible.

http://impiousdigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/sfff1.jpg

im sure the weapons connection was more apparent when the movie came out at the height of the space race.

i've always assumed that Kubrick is alluding to the match cut from the hunting hawk to the Spitfire at the beginning of A Canterbury Tale so the status of both as weapons wd be entirely in keeping

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rFWlT5gdgw

start around 3'07 there

the only difference between human and ape is the sophistication of human tools

just ordered da book

That Canterbury Tale cut is great! I didn’t know about this, is it common knowledge that he’s alluding to it?

Interesting just how much Bowie (and others obvs) were influenced by this and A Clockwork Orange in the early 70s. According to Mick Rick’s book Moonage Daydream anyway, which is pretty much a mini-autobiog by Bowie as he wrote the accompanying text. I think my generation tends to forget just how much of a total out-of-the-blue headfuck Kubrick’s peak period was to the switched-on kids back then.

The 'human zoo' run by trans-temporal beings is also a theme in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five which came out about the same time

The shooting started less than two years after Strangelove's release, and I think he was working with Clarke by late '63. The actor playing the male Russian official (Leonard Rossiter) even has a Peter Sellers vibe.

If you're interested in even more nuts and bolts then you should check out the Cinefex issue from 2001 that had a huge retrospective making-of article.

I'm never sure about how comedic that bit's supposed to be because for UK audiences Rossiter's best known for his later appearances in sitcoms like Rising Damp and Reginald Perrin and I can't really extract it from that part.

whenever i've seen the film in the last few decades US audiences always laugh at the right spots

(and while some of us have seen Reginald Perrin, we mostly know Rossiter from this and his more grotesque role in Barry Lyndon)

I don't know if Kubrick ever acknowledged the Canterbury Tale bit or not pisces but i assume P&P were auteur's darlings by the time he made 2001 and I'd be surprised if Kubrick wasn't at least aware of that cut

Rossiter was probably as good a comic actor as Sellers imo, just less exposed. I've always thought his role in 2001 was straight tho

xpost great point w the Bowie connection, piscesx! it seems like space and the possibilities it provided went hand-in-hand with sexual/gender/identity exploration. ACO and 2001 both being largely about human transformation certainly hit a nerve in the zeitgeist. morality tales contemplating a post-earth/post-human existence.

This is a good round-up of the films and filmmakers that Kubrick was known to admire. No mention of Canterbury Tales, or anything by Powell and Pressburger, though of course that's not to say there wasn't an unacknowledged influence. The article does mention the Czech SF film Ikarie XB-1, which Kubrick did look at prior to filming 2001 and which definitely has a few visual similarities w/ 2001.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/polls-surveys/stanley-kubrick-cinephile

The passive-aggressive chat with the Russians in the Earthlight lounge is a companion to the rivalry of the man-ape tribes.

― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, July 18, 2018 12:01 PM (eight hours ago)

something else that occurred to me this time around: when the apes get their spark of intelligence from the monolith, the first thing they do is start killing each other. HAL's first independent action -- something he wasn't programmed to do -- is to commit murder. presumably we can hope for better from star-child dave.

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE OR I'LL MURDER YOU

I first saw the film in a theatrical re-release when I was 12. I was half-convinced that HAL's mania was programmed by the mission planners. Never considered the monolith's role.

I saw it last night on the big screen for the second time. each time I see it, a little bit more of it clicks into place but I never understand the ending. I'd love to read this book

You should also watch this little video interview from 1980, which MaresNest posted to the general Kubrick thread, in which he elaborates a little on 1969 comments. I love how gentle and softly-spoken the whole thing is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEt5uv7weXU&feature=youtu.be&t=4m46s

Here's the transcript of the bit when he's asked about the ending:

“I’ve tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it, but I’ll try.

The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.

They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn’t quite sure. Just as we’re not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what they think is their natural environment.

Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made some kind of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.”

HAL's first independent action -- something he wasn't programmed to do -- is to commit murder. presumably we can hope for better from star-child dave.

And HAL suffers his paranoid psychological break after first desperately looking for an excuse to unload to Dave the secret he's been charged with keeping:

I know I've never completely freed myself of the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this mission. I'm sure you'll agree there's some truth in what I say. Well, certainly no one could have been unaware of the very strange stories floating around before we left. Rumours of something being dug up on the moon. I never gave these stories much credence. But particularly in view of some of the other things that have happened I find them difficult to put out of my mind. For instance, the way all our preparations were kept under such tight security. And the melodramatic touch of putting doctors Hunter, Kimball and Kaminski aboard already in hibernation after four months of separate training on their own.

then he tells an outright lie for the first time in his life:

BOWMAN: You're working up your crew psychology report.
HAL: Of course I am. Sorry about this. I know it's a bit silly.

And immediately after that he predicts the fault in the AE35 unit. So that psychological break, in a sense, makes him "human," and that in turn makes him a killer.

i love the cadence and rhythm of HAL's speech there.

Operation avalanches spliced footage of Kubrick at nasa was a joy. Recommended to any 2001 fan

incredible post, Eliza D.

when he says "melodramatic touch" it is so spooky. to me it seems like a very non-computer thing to say, an unnecessary detail.

that is a great scene. with some unnerving emotional investment he is questioning his own input. hearing un-vetted information (possibly for the first time?), the act of piecing it together is causing him to form his own narrative. this in turn is making him question his main purpose. he is so conspiratorial here! god it's incredible.