2001: A Space Odyssey

I recently re-watched this classic for the first time in a few years and was immediately struck at just how much I had missed from the "grand picture" or "grand narrative" of things that the movie empathizes, and indeed, showcases to brilliance.

First of all there's the theme of the film - that of a humanity who's evolution had been interfered with by a mysterious alien civilization learning to stand for the first time - indeed the process of ageing that comes with a high-level extraterrestrial contact.

There's also the luxurious use of space craft and space-age technology in the film - the aesthetic that defined this as Kubrick's first classic and indeed as a film worthy of some note well into the future. I can see Star Wars drew a lot from this film. Personally, I never grew tired or bored with what was presented, I just ate it all up and marveled in the imagery and the mind-bending concept.

I would welcome fellow BBSers thoughts on the film.

 

Much like TMP - it has a slow pace but, with Kubrick's work, it's very deliberate.

This is one older film that honestly needs NO modifications at all. No special editions, no enhanced effects. It set the bar for others to follow (and few have actually passed it).

 

I have to agree. I feel the sequencing, pacing, music, etc., would be very unconductive to a special edition edit. And the effects do not need touching.

 

According to the Roger Ebert review of this film, there's 17 minutes trimmed from the original theatrical release. Maybe a special edition in that?

 

Love this movie, a classic. Kubrick was a great director.

 

The movie went in a different direction from the source material that it also raised the theme of humans framing the space narrative to stay in power.

Starting from that famous jump cut where the caveman throws the bone and the guy catches the pen: The pen is the new weapon of dominance. Through all the alien contact the humans are only interested in well framed photo shoots as their technology races ahead of their ability to control it.

And many have noted the monoliths look like movie screens turned sideways.

 

The famous jump cut is flying bone to orbiting satellite. There is a pen floating a bit later in the space shuttle sequence; a flight attendant pucks it out of the air.

 

Maybe I’m confusing scenes, there was definitely a symbol of power that became a pen.

 

I don't know what that would be.

The symbol of human technology went from the bone club to the satellite. The implication was that humans are still violent primates, just with fancier implements. The satellite was intended to be an orbital nuke platform, but that wasn't made clear in the movie.

 

Maybe I need to rewatch, but there was also a leopard print pattern which recalled the leopard preying on the cavemen. Maybe a press conference scene. It’s been a few years since I watched it.

Edit: The pen is the first thing you see after the space station, rotating in the same fashion. Still a continuous motif.

 

Good catch. The image of the pen floating inside the space plane is a nice echo of the satellite image. That would make it a one-two-three (bone, satellite, pen), instead of simply what is usually observed, a one-two. Very nice!

 

Clearly we have Gary Seven to thank for this uncertainty.

 

It's the first example of an AI gone crazy and destroying its creators...

I remember the scene of Hal pleading with David Bowman to not terminate it after it's killed everyone else on the ship.

 

I'd say the motif is continued, yes, but the symbolic impact is in the jump cut. After that it's echoed in nifty human instruments floating around. But it wouldn't be 1-2-3, it would be more like 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, over a couple of minutes.

1. Bone club thrown, 00:19:46.
2. Satellite #1 (US Markings), 00:19:53.
3. Satellite #2 (German markings), 00:20:08.
4. Satellite #3 (French markings) 00:20:19.
5. Satellite #4 (Chinese markings), 00:20:35.
6. Space station, 00:20:53.
7. Spaceplane, 00:21:24.
8. Pen floats down into frame, 00:21:46.

 

It's been so long that I've seen this movie. I never realized that there were so many different spacecraft in so little time.

 

Yes, clearly the jump cut is the dramatic cut. But the satellites, station, and ships are all spacecraft and so pretty much in the same category. The pen is a whole new, third category of technology apart from bone and spacecraft. The fact that this new third category of technology is also shown hanging in the air/floating in space the way the bone was and the spacecraft were seems highly significant.

I would agree that all of the other spacecraft are definitely dancing to that motif as well (). The space plane especially so, because it too is elongated.

But the category shift is what makes it one-two-three. The other instances in the second category are more iterative than successively transformative. It's more like 1-2a-2b-2c-2d-2e-2f-3. There's also the tonal shift once we're inside the space plane, and the element of humor, pretty much for the first time in the film.

As an aside, now that I'm thinking about the spacecraft specifically in terms of shape, the fact that the moon shuttle is generally spherical could be significant, as that shape is a reflection of the Moon's itself. I hadn't realized that before, either.

Of course, everyone knows that the shape of Discovery is significant as generally skeletal. Again with the bones, but also specifically anthropomorphic.

Getting back to the pen, there's a sequence of Frank and Dave writing on their clipboards with what appear to be pens. Frank is transcribing columns of numbers like a computer, and presumably Dave is doing something similar. You'd wonder why they are doing that, if HAL has everything under control (I've wondered). But the answer could lie simply in the premises that the pen is important to symbolize the human intellect and the scene of the astronauts writing on their clipboards is there to underscore the idea that mechanical computers are a reflection of human intellectual activity, HAL of course being the ultimate realization of that.

 

The source material was "The Sentinel" short story by Arthur C Clarke. I haven't read it so can't comment. But that was just a starting point for the movie script. The novel by ACC was based on the movie not the other way around.

 

Yeah. The wine glass, too.

 

Nope. Kubrick personally chopped that footage out between the Cinerama premiere and the wide release (because the audience was nodding off), and ordered all copies destroyed, never to be seen by the public again. When the original footage was discovered in a salt mine a few years back, it was decided to honor Kubrick's wishes and not include it in any future video release.

From all the descriptions of the deleted scenes that have leaked out over the years, they were cut for very good reason - repetitive, non-story-important material that just slowed the film's already languid pace down to glacial.

Spoiler: Stuff like...

- Extra vignettes of the ape-men's life pre-Monolith, and a slower buildup to the lake attack at the sequence's end.
- We actually see the Pan Am shuttle enter the Space Station's bay and dock.
- Floyd calling up Macy's on videophone to get his daughter that bushbaby she wanted (and having it delivered to their home)
- Floyd visiting a school on Clavius Base, where kids (including two of Kubrick's daughters) are painting in an art class.
- An extended montage of daily life on Discovery One, including Dave playing on an electric piano with headphones on, playing pentominoes with HAL, getting woken up and asked what he wanted for breakfast, etc.
- Dave sending a message out to Mission Control about HAL's warning about the AE-35 unit. (Keir Dullea could, and did, repeat it from memory to convention audiences decades later.)
- The first spacewalk was much, MUCH longer. Starting with Dave walking into a storage corridor to get the replacement AE-35 unit, then continuing after the part is replaced to have Bowman floating back to his pod and flying it back into the pod bay.
- After Mission Control warns the crew that HAL appears to be in error predicting the fault, a long pause broken by HAL asking "Do you wish me to repeat the message?"
- Frank's fatal EVA starts out and plays exactly the same as Bowman's extended one - storage locker, getting in the pod and taking off, the long flight out, getting out of the pod and floating out. The first hint of something wrong is when Bowman loses radio contact with Frank on the bridge, followed by the shot of the pod turning on Frank and attacking.
- HAL's death sequence was longer and ended with his 'eye' going out.
- When exploring the hotel room in the final sequence, the shell-shocked spacesuited Dave finds the black bathrobe and slippers he will wear a moment later laid out on the bed.