What is 2001: A Space Odyssey all about?

Hi all,
I just hired 2001: A Space Odyssey and i mjust say it is one amazing movie. i dont think it would be in my Top 10 films of all time list but its a mighty fine movie nonetheless.
One of the things i didnt like about the movie is some of the scenes were very long and drawn out, a lot of them could have been cut down to make the story flow better.
Also the movie has to have one of the most baffling endings in movie history.
For everyone that has seen the movie what are your thoughts on the movie? in particular what did u think of the ending?

There are many aspects of the film that i find odd/bewildering.
1) why did they have the bit at the start of the film with the apes? what does that have to do with future space explaration?

2) why would an 'artifact' on the Moon be of such great concern to mankind. they were saying how it could cause great panic on earth.
i don't know about anyone else but if i heard news there was something of unknown origin found on the moon, i would be surprised, but it wouldnt send me into a chaotic frenzy and make me run for he hills.

3) how on earth did they figure out there was a frequency from the artifact on the Moon aimed towards Jupiter?
and heres my million dollar question. why would 5 people volunteer for a space mission to a planet that noone had ever been to before. its not like Jupiter was colonized or there was a base waiting for them when they got there. what were they meant to do when they got there, just confirm there was a black artifact there then come back? that is seriously mental.

4) with the HAL computer, why wasn't there the option of turning it off if it went screwy. surely at NASA if they ever made a spaceship fully operated by a computer theyd design it so if it malfunctioned the humans could shut it down and run it manually.

5) also how on earth was HAL able to read the astronauts lips when they were talking about shutting it down. there is NO WAY a computer would ever be able to do that!

6) now the biggest question of all, what is with the ending?? even listening to the commentary on the special edition DVD im still baffled by the ending.

why would he leave the spacehip when he is near Jupiter and hop in the little pod thing?? i can't imagine the pod having that much fuel in it. and can someone tell me how on earth the little pod managed to travel such a vast distance when the man was travelling for what seemed like a VERY long time? i know in the future theyd be able to make fuel last longer but thats rather absurd to suggest a pod could travel such a vast distance.

and what was with that 'space trip' he took anyway? was he sucked into some black hole or something and was travelling at the speed of light.

and what was with the 'house' he was i at the end? was that a dream or something. how could he be in a house when he's in space?? was it all in his mind? after all he was totally out of it when the space trip was over.
then it seems he went through 2 stages of ageing, whats up with that? was he in his pod for that lentgh of time that he had aged?

and what was with the bit when the oldest man is in bed and looks at the artifact?? whats that meant to represent?
and then it appears theres a large baby on the bed. ?????

finally theres a shot of planet earth with the giant szed 'baby' in space looking at the earth. whats that all about?

i would greatly appreciate if other people who have seen the film could share thier thoughts on the movie, in partilcular the ending.

I know exactly what you mean... them there space type movies are totally unrealistic. And stuff.

Your first Stanley Kubrick film I take it?

__________________
We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

I think you need to rewatch the film again, without the commentary, but with your list of questions readily available. In fact, in reading "your" questions, I believe you will be able to connect the dots easily enough, especially the first question and the last few. You have to not take things so literally and look into all the plot points and what remains constant throughout the movie concerning the monoliths.



The only question I'll answer now is number 2. Finding the monolith on the moon probably wouldn't cause anyone to "run for the hills", but it could very well cause cultural shock and throw all kinds of things into a tizzy, including science and religion. I'm also pretty sure that any national superpowers would want to keep from having a "monolith gap".

Check back and tell us what you find out after a rewatch. Welcome to the site.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Go to Google Video, Search "Nibiru" or "Repitialians" or "the Luciefer Project" and maybe that will scare you about what this movie could be talking about

Having seen 2001: A Space Odyssey afew times, I believe that it's about looking into the future. (ironic, since 2001 has already come and gone). I really did enjoy it.

At this point, after a whole slew of viewings, I read the film as a study on Nietzischean Beast/Man/Superman philosophy coupled with a futuristic telling of Homer's The Odyssey. We have a Frankenstein concept running through the final act, as well.

Kubrick brilliantly merges these concepts while simultaneously injecting his instantly recognizable Kubrickian style. We have the character of David BOWman, who is clearly the Odysseus character, who must destroy the cyclops (HAL 9000) in order to progress beyond certain events.

To understand the various levels of existence in the film, once should look to the Beast/Man/Superman theories of Friedrich Nietzsche.

We are shown the beast in the opening sequence of events. With these shots, Kubrick establishes the visceral ferocity of that which is BEAST, finally focusing on a small band of apes as they go about their daily lives. At one point, the apes are harassed by a rival group of apes, who, from what I can tell, covet the living area of the first band of apes. The apes gesture and roar at one another, but that is the extent of the rivalry.

Enter, The Monolith. After touching the strange object, the first group of apes begin to change. Their intellect begins to develop, and they begin to evolve. One particular ape discovers a tool, which in this case, represents technology. The beast begins the transformation to man, the ugly middle step on the Nietzschean ladder. Point being, beast evolves through the use of tools. Violence, and other unsavory concepts are also discovered.

We are then brought ahead in time, and man is in space. Technology has carried man quite a distance over the years, but something is missing. Man lives a dry, sterile, and yes, boring existence. Long, drawn out scenes of lifeless dialogue showcase man's listless life on earth and in the stars.

Another Monolith is found, this time on the moon. The Monolith beams a message out into space, aimed towards Jupiter, and man send a ship out to investigate. Aboard the ship is the pinnacle in technology, HAL9000; artificial Intelligence, the ultimate tool. At one point, after havening been given conflicting orders and information by various humans, HAL goes off the deep end, and murders some of the crew. The AI becomes paranoid and dysfunctional, truly mirroring human characteristics. The AI becomes a monster, bent on the destruction of those who created it.

The final act is where it all comes together, albeit in an extremely abstract and abstruse way. The concept being that, for man to progress to the next rung on the ladder, the SUPERMAN, he must destroy technology, the tool that helped the beast transcend. David Bowman engages the cyclops, and, in an oddly touching scene, lobotomizes the AI. Once complete, Bowman begins his journey of transcendence, which is presented in late 60s acidic trappings.

I don't want to elaborate too much on the final sequence, as it is clearly open to interpretation, and I think a lot of this piece of art is diminished if it is put into words. Kubrick uses brilliant cinematic language that asks us many questions about the nature of existence, age, hypocrisy (with the Victorian era bedroom, a time in our history in which we attempted to appear ultra-civilized, when in fact we were anything but), isolation, loneliness, imagination, and evolution. I get some of it, but there is more to be learned or thought about. That is what makes this such a wonderful film. I think a person can learn and interpret different things from it during their entire lifetime as they (we) progress, regress, and change.

As for the way the film is paced, I wouldn't change a thing. I like to lose myself in the film's languid pacing, while I mull over the various concepts discussed above, as well as whatever new concepts begin to emerge each time I watch the film.

One of the best pieces of film ever made, IMO.

__________________

from what I can interpret it's about the progression/evolution of man with the 'tools' he creates/uses. alien life places a monolith as a sentinal to keep an eye on man but also to assist man with its evolution (the connection with the bone to kill/dominate others with).
in the future man creates the ultimate tool > artificial intelligence, it comes into contact with the monolith and it too evolves, and sees no need for man anymore.
however it underestimates man and man's 'balls' so to speak (pod into ship scene).
as for the end I guess the power of the monolith transforms dave into the starchild and the time travel/hotel scenes at the end are the only way his mind can comprehend what is happening...?

Go back and count the sunrises in that bit about the apes. As I recall, the oblisk appears on the 7th day, when God is said to have completed the world. At that point, the apes begin to evolve, thanks to whatever knowledge that stone transfers to them. And their first advancement is to make tools for hunting and for killing each other. That and the TWA space ship docking are my favorite parts of the movie, which rapidly went down hill from that point.

Now that's funny! Think a minute. NASA who didn't even want to put a window in the first space capsules for astronauts to look out? NASA who let three astronauts burn to death in a pure oxygen environment on the launch pad because no one thought to design the spacecraft so that the escape hatch could be opened from the inside? NASA who spent millions of dollars launching a telescope that it later found to be faulty? NASA who nearly let one moonteam die following an explosion on the rocket enroute to the moon? NASA who killed off one space shuttle crew because they took the chance that the rubber and metal O-rings would not be adversely affected by a unexpected cold snap? NASA who killed a second shuttle team when a piece of insulation broke off during launch and damaged the vessel beyoud repair so that it burned up on reentry? That NASA???

To me, the even bigger question is, when you're trying to override a computer that is outsmarting you at every turn to the point that you have to get into a separate space pod so it can't overhear you, why didn't those two spacegoofs turn their backs to the window that HAL was looking through? Or better yet, communicate through written notes passed below the level of the window so that he couldn't see.

All I know is that the producer got a lot of oohs and ahhs by running several feet of negative film tinted in different colors, which likely was much cheaper than running a processed film of the same scene. By the time they got to the baby, old man and astronaut puttering around in the same empty house, I had given up on trying to make sense of it any more. But the embryo and earth were pictured together to draw some sort of parallel between the two, but mostly because it looked so good on the movie posters outside of theaters. People liked to hang posters like that on their bedroom walls back then. Personally, I think the whole movie was about a bad LSD trip, full of lights, colors, and distortions.

Now I see why I could never appreciate this movie! I was still in college, not yet a graduate, and pursuing the wrong majors--journalism and government instead of philosophy and comparative literature!

I always thought the ending implied that he'd passed outside of linear time - hence the fact that we see him as old man, young man and child, all within a few seconds of each other. The idea is that time is a dimension like any other, and that it's possible to 'step outside' of it in such a way that the past, present and future all become one.

The example they always drag out is that of a man in a canoe travelling down a river. His past is the part of the river he's just come from; his present is the point in the river where he is right now; his future is what lies around the next bend.

At the same time, however, another man is flying above him in an aircraft. To this man all three areas of the river are in the present - he simultaneously sees where the canoeist has been, where he is now, and where he will be.

If this doesn't help, just try drinking a lot of tequila then watching it again!

__________________
Check my blog at www.theflickerproject.com.
Another day, another movie...

I like that analogy. The omnipotent view sort of falls in to the superman theory, as well, as perhaps the consciousness of the superman transcends the perception of times we regular men are locked into. That's what you are talking about, no? Relative perception?

Cool analogy! I'm new here but this place is great.

That reminds me of a standup comedy bit that actor Severn Darden used to do back in the 1960s about Archimedes telling his wife Helena, "Time is like a river flowing endlessly through space, and you cannot step into the same river twice," since the flow that has passed will never pass again. To which his wife replies, "Don't be an ass, Archimedes. You can step in the same river twice--if you move downstream." Achimedes was amazed! And he decides to test his wife's theory, so he goes down to the river, tosses in a stick to gage it's rate of flow, and then he stepped and ran, stepped and ran, stepped and ran--until finally he ran out into the Aegean Sea and was drown!

Come to think of it, the ending of 2001 was a lot like that--a pointless trip going nowhere.

For some, perhaps, but not for others.

OK so basically from what I gather the end is really up to the viewers interpretation...seriously there is no comment from Kubrick on it??

__________________
"More human than human" is our motto.

Not that I've seen. Holden may know of a source in which he commented about it, but I am pretty sure he wasn't a person to comment on meaning too much. I think he liked his films to speak for themselves.

That's fine, Mark, I wasn't trying to speak for you. I appreciate the reasons you gave for liking it. And I realize that most of the world think it's one of the greatest films ever released, so I'm not trying to convert anyone to my viewpoint (which is why I pinned that little smiley face to what even I recognize as an outlandish statement). But in an open discussion and exchange of opinions about the film, I personally find that movie to be awfully pretentious, and I don't mean in a "let's pretend we're astronauts" way.

Oh, sure it's pretentious. For this film, I can forgive that mis-step, because I find it so thought provoking.

A Good explanation short and sweet!

http://www.kubrick2001.com/

__________________
Stallone is my hero!

I'm not a huge fan of this film, I think it tries to be more important then what it actually turned out to be. Does the opening scene REALLY need to be 20 minutes of apes? And if I want to see a dozen different colour styles of the human eye, I'd go to an art show.

I'm willing to give it another chance though, just not too soon.

__________________
"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews