If 2001 is your #1 movie, tell me why

Death of the Author...

I haven't been following this thread closely, but I seem to recall someone advocating for the need of a 2001 fan edit. Personally I find that icky, it's like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. So if that's what Death of the Author is being connected to here, then there's my two cents.

However in the broader sense of Death of the Author I've said this in the past:


It's funny that over the years and on various threads most of my 'Death of the Author' usage was in relation to Ridley Scott and Blade Runner

Sounds like you're more of "The Death of an Author"-type person.

Just out of curiosity, what scenes are those?

Usually the opening scene and Fassbender's intro/briefing. Others come and go but those are the two I usually watch each time.

The only significant Kubrick film that's relevant to the "death of the author" debate is Room 237.


The problem with "death of the author" is that it enables such asinine pseudoanalysis that is, in most cases, far less creative or inspired than the original work. What's perhaps most amusing about Room 237 is in how convinced each pontificator is in their own feral theory, each one more ludicrous than the last. Maybe that's an extreme example, but it's up there with similar attempts to recast the Empire as the good guys or suggest that Skynet might be a good idea after all. At some point there's limitations on interpretations if anyone is expected to take them seriously. Of course, anyone is also free to author their own stories to reflect these ideas, but, as Room 237 shows, many of these interpreters are creative have-nots. When all interpretations become equally valid, then interpretation itself becomes meaningless noise. It reminds me of Kubrick's explanation for why he wasn't interested in LSD, "when everything is beautiful, nothing is beautiful".



The audience is the passive participant in this particular creative exercise. We wouldn't buy books if we all could write great ones. There's a certain hostility to the author for their skill and talent, a deep-seated need to elevate the contribution of the passive patron to equal footing with the hard work of the chef, and maybe even higher. A different kind of god-complex, perhaps. It reminds me of someone named Yarn who once posted that musicians shouldn't expect to be compensated for their work, rather "the love of it" should suffice to pay their rent.



I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't be, at the very least, interested in authorial intent of the works they enjoy, even if one's enjoyment is in spite of it. We can quibble over how articulate and sublime or muddled and ham-fisted the intent was executed, over the veracity of the conception, or point out missed opportunities to enhance the intent, but the intent of the author, much like the practical effort of the manifested work, is not some disposable by-product of a work. Without the initial intent, there is no work at all.

When it comes to the author's intent for 2001 (the movie) we have to then bow to the intent of Arthur C. Clarke in his novel 2001. Personally I don't bow

That's part of the problem. There is no single author for most filmic texts.

There's the writer.
There's the studio/producers.
There's the script doctors.
There's the director.
There's the minions of sight and sound.
There's the actors giving the performance.
Then there's the editor and composer who can turn things upside down even after these things are "on film."

We give far too much credit to directors and don't reflect enough on "we-intentions" of the group and the conflicting intentions within the group.

I'll happily bow to both.



An interesting scenario, the novel and screenplay were written simultaneously with Kubrick' input. In term of auteur's intent, the film is still very much Kubrick's child. In his intention to create a deliberately non-lingual experience in the viewer, by minimizing literary conventions like dialogue and character development in lieu of purely cinematic devices, the film's ambiguity allows for a lot of leeway in interpretation, and Kubrick was famously resistant to clarify. (His criticism of 2010 was that it explained too much.) I think it's safe to say that the film and the book are different animals.

My off-the-cuff thoughts on DOTA is that, while it isn't entirely without merit depending on the circumstances, it should still be applied or rejected on a case-by-case basis, and while that view may seem "boring" in its (relative) nuance, I still feel it's better than the idea that an artist's intentions when creating their art should never, ever be taken into consideration, since that seems to me like a theory that tries to deal in pointlessly rigid, "Sith"-style absolutes in order to cause more controversy than thoughtful, good faith discussion, as a mid-century predecessor to modern hot take culture (I imagine Barthes would be right at home on Twitter if he were alive). Of course, the opposite holds true as well, since a work of art isn't automatically effective at achieving a certain effect simply because the artist intended it to; instead, I view authorial intent as a stepping-off point for insight into a work, not an end, but a beginning, one that may or may not be followed up on well in the artwork itself, depending on its quality. So, intent can be extremely relevant, but if you're going to reference it to back up your points, then I think it's something you need to make a compelling case for being reflected well in the work's own merits.

We give far too much credit to Barthes for creating the idea in his '67 essay of this name. The debate goes way back to the "Personal Heresy" (Lewis vs. Tillyard in '39) and then Wimsatt and Beardsley in '46 (and these are just notable entries - anti-intentionalist ideas predate these essays). This was an idea popularized in the New Criticism before the postmodernists took over.

The middle ground position you strike, I think, is the only reasonable stance to take and this is one that more recent scholars have embraced (e.g., modest actual intentionalism).

This one quote is intriguing: "Refusing to assign a 'secret', an ultimate meaning, liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases - reason, science, law." This kind of epistemic resistence is definitely common among certain corners of social media at the moment. Some people also find this refusal to be loosely empowering against their own perceived windmills.

So you're saying it should be Death of the Auteur?

There Will Be Blood uses its drawn out early moments for us to identify with an individual. As slow as these scenes may be, we have a central figure to relate to, regardless of his ultimate morality. 2001 is taking its time to empathize with a long draw out process. All of its living actors are not quite human primates who we can only understand on the most basic of terms. Of course it wouldn't resonate in the same way. But this doesn't change the fact that it is central to the entire structure of the film, regardless of whether or not it grants you some kind of emotional alignment with anything on screen.


You still seem to be under the impression that I'm demanding you watch the film exactly as I do. I will state again, it is of no relevance to me how any one individual watches anything. I am also feeling no threat that you will abscond with the first reel because of your ape hate. My points are simply in relation to those who say the movie is flawed because of certain elements. My belief is it isn't flawed in any way that has thus far been discussed in this thread (subjective, of course, but I have tried to provide my reasons). The Dawn of Man scene, not only provides thematic symmetry, but it allows the films scope to open wide enough to encapsulate all of mankind. Where we came from, where we are hypothetically going. It sets up the films relationship with time, drawing out certain sequences and truncating others.

No you having a preference to just watch space stuff is obviously your choice. And if you get something out of specifically omitting the opening, whatever. But everything you've stated so far in making this choice of skipping past what you don't like, really hasn't provided much insight into the discussion beyond the fact that you like certain parts more than others. Which is FINE, but doesn't give much to discuss beyond, okay, you do you.

I'm always a little hazy on exactly what Death of the Author is suggesting, but I've always found its insistence that we can discard the intent of the artist, as well as the context they produced their work in, to be pretty dubious. We should be looking at a piece of art from as many angles as possible. Shutting out what is possibly the most obvious of sources to find a works meaning seems, um, grossly arrogant, if not just plain ignorant.

At the same time though, I do get the venom Death of the Author has towards the view that authorship should lock down the way we interact with a piece of art. And so I don't personally discourage anyone from stepping outside of the lines in what they take away from a piece, even if the author of it maybe didn't see it that way themselves. Just because there may have been a very specific intent in its construction, and just because the conditions they wrote it in may give us a perspective on the the emotional/psychological/political/sociological state it was born from, I don't think we are any obligation to stop there in how we think about the work. Authorship is rarely so inflexibly wired that we can't sometimes find undiscovered perspectives hidden inside of their work. Artists frequently are compelled forward in their decisions by abstract ideas, and abstract ideas can easily slip away from concrete interpretation, no matter how desperately an artist might try and freeze them in place. So, if Death of the Author, means we can have a little more space to think about a piece of art unconventionally, so be it. And if annoys those with more conservative approaches....good.

Now, this doesn't mean all interpretations are created equally. And it also doesn't mean we should just throw out what we can glean from the artists intent entirely. Instead, we should be able to hold up what we personally took away from a film, as well as what we know of the intent of the film, and see what we come up with when comparing and contrasting them. It shouldn't be some kind of science in trying to understand why a piece of art moves us, or entertains us, or enlightens us. It should instead be a case of trying to understand as many different perspectives as possible, and hopefully, after discarding the ones that simply don't pan out, we can then keep looking for even more ways to think about it. It thinks its nice to think of it as an infininte work in progress

As for addressing your point of whether Death of the Author should obligate us MORE to consider the entire object, I'm not sure if I see how that changes that 'obligation'. Obviously, if we are keeping exclusively to authorial intent, we need to see everything before we can judge how it lives up to those intents. But if we are going to accept a more personal take, divorced by authorship, while I think this may allow us to just engage only with what we choose to engage with, t still feels just as wonky to me to then pronounce any feeling on the ENTIRE work, by singling out specific elements.

Now, my opinion still stands people should watch anything anyway they want. But when it comes to then trying to engage in some kind of discussion about the film, those fragmentary takes don't really amount to much in such a discussion. Like, how am I supposed to take someone seriously who will only refer to what bolsters their argument, and discards what doesn't as being unneccessary. I think I'd rather pull my hair out then talk to someone like that.

Yeah, my posture towards DOTA is kinda the same as my posture towards someone who tells me "all opinions about art are subjective." Which is: yes, okay, technically true, but it's a pretty lame way to shut down discussion. DOTA doesn't mean intent doesn't matter, and like art being subjective it doesn't actually mean all opinions are equally valid or well-considered. Both ideas are probably true, at least when put in their best form, but often they're hauled out as a Get-Out-of-Hot-Take-Free Card. I'm not saying that's happening right here and now at all, to be clear.

For me the trickiest part is that many directors have an innate grasp of drama and storytelling that leads them towards rich metaphorical veins (in both sense: the veins are rich with metaphor and are part of the metaphor I'm using), which means great works will lend themselves to unintended interpretations that are nevertheless to the creator's credit. Without even getting into the subconscious...

Totally agree, especially for older films where the director is hired by a producer and doesn't have full control of his/her film. However nowadays directors are more autonomous, even writing and editing their own films...So in that case those directors are more in control of the total content that makes up their film. But yes, you're right there are many important elements that go to make up a movie.

When I view a film I give myself permission to form my own opinions on what the film personally meant to me. And that's a personal opinion that I form. I do realize people have vastly different reactions to movies, which is as it should be.

If after watching a film I read an article that quotes the director as saying the film represents something different than what I felt and believed, I'm not then going to tell myself my emotions and thoughts that resulted from viewing the movie is invalid, just because another person, i.e. the director, says the movie meant something else. A good example is 2001

Indiwire article about lost Stanley Kubrick interview and 2001 ending

As it turns out what Kubrick said about the ending is what I had already believed happened in the movie too. BUT if I had believed the ending of 2001 meant to me that God had taken his creation (mankind) into a higher state of being in God's masterplan for humanity, then whatever Kubrick said he had intended would not change my belief.

I might find a director's explanation of their movie intentions interesting and it might add more to my enjoyment of the movie but it wouldn't shake my own leap of faith.

That's not really fair. Reasons have been offered.

1. The dawn of man segment holds up the poorest in terms of visuals (i.e., my comment about "apes in sneakers"). The ape costumes are not great and you can't unsee the shoes. This hurts the overall visual quality of the film.

2. The early scene offers romantic/religious account of the ascent of man (i.e., intelligent design). The greatest hard science fiction film offers an account of what "really makes us human" (homo technologicus) via a theory of human development that is too controverisal to teach in school. This diminishes the quality of the film as tops of the "hard" science genre. Without the scene which shows the monolith making man, we can view the monolith as simply an intelligence detector on the moon and not the thing which selected for humans and selected for our intelligence and "elevated" us above the rest of the animals (a theological account).

3. Starting with Dr. Poole on the way to the moon with Dr. Floyd conveys a sense of procedural mystery at the start of the film. Why is he going to the moon? What have the found at Tycho? We're on the move with the characters and so we're not left there looking at apes with all the time in the world to think about the rest of the film. For a well-worn film, it can be nice to make a move which disorients the viewer from what is known (which delays total viewing exhaustion).

4. Finally, there is the weak evidence of testimony and analogy. I have tried it, I have reported that it works. We have considered an analogy to another Kubrick film where skipping works better for some viewers (this suggests that my recipe is not a pure idiosyncratic response, but that others have enjoyed "segmenting" Kubrick). This is not strong evidence, but at least does suggest that it might be worth trying as a lark to see what the "experience" is like. If, like Mikey, you like the taste of Life Cereal, then we have an intersubjective agreement (i.e., my method can result in a falsification). You are so certain, however, that you don't appear willing to try it. That's fine. You do you. Until you try it, however, the weak proof remains uncontested.

I think it might be a mistake to view 2001 as a factual account of human evolution.

It’s not original, and I hate that I don’t have some obscure, hidden gem as a favorite, but mine is Goodfellas. I saw it at age 11, so even though I know it’s a brilliant movie, I feel like the nostalgia will always keep this as my number one. I watch it a few times a year. Still amazing. Still brilliant.