Quite Annoying (Yet Valid?) Review of 2001: A Space Odyssey

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I've bought a second-hand copy of The Lost Worlds of 2001 on eBay for less than £10 that looks in acceptable condition considering it's 45 years old. I'd prefer a Kindle version but I doubt it'll ever be reprinted even in that form. It's a pity because it's a really good book.

 

[Maurice]

I'm not going watch the video to hear yet another person regurgitating theories about the film that have been out there since 1968. We're no smarter than audiences and critics were then, and interpretation of the monolith as aliens, a movie screen, a doorway, etc. etc. ad nauseam are as old as the film itself.

I'm glad Kubrick never chose to ossify a single interpretation of the film by saying what it meant or what he intended it to mean. In fact, from my reading—and I've read a lot about the film's production—he was adjusting and adapting throughout shooting and post-production. The monolith wasn't always a black rectangle. In fact, they apparently had a see-though perspex monolith built, then scrapped when the results weren't satisfactory. They spent time and money and tests to try to portray aliens—including using the man who played the unnamed Moonwatcher covered head to toe in dots and having him move against a static pattern of dots—then gave up very late in the game when they realized none of it was working.

One thing that struck me maybe my second time seeing the film as an adult is that there are really only three sequences, not four, a triptych, not a tetraptych. The Dawn of Man, Jupiter Mission, and Jupiter and Beyond the infinite. The Dawn of Man includes the australopithecines and everything though Floyd and the astronauts getting eardrum-blasted. The iconic 4-million year jump cut just moves from the first piece of technology to a much later piece of tech. We watch the australopithecines sleeping, eating, fighting, stagnant, and curious about this thing that shows up amongst them, same as Floyd those he encounters on his trip, whom we see sleeping, eating, fighting (in a Cold War manner), stagnant, and curious about this thing that shows up amongst them.

As has been speculated endlessly, HAL can be read as the ultimate expression of that bone tool, and Bowman has to kill it, let go of it, and be reborn in order to become the Nietzschean ubermensch we see at the final.

But that's just one of endless possible interpretations.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, the video creator's notion that he is the first to bring this interpretation to light is ludicrous. In fact, it's delusional. That he tries to disguise it for the sake of making it some sort of intellectual challenge of purity of thought is quite pathetic. He seems to want to be the high priest of a new cult of pretentiousness.

 

[Relayer1]

I had to throw my 2nd hand copy of Lost Worlds away - it had some kind of bookworm.

 

[Tosk]

I didn't watch the video, but I did read his description and comments. Jeez, he doesn't half think highly of himself, does he? The arrogance is quite astounding.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yet more musing from deep down within the rabbit hole of pretentious nonsense - or is it?

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I think the theory that the 2+5 diamonds is a signature for Kubrick himself is most likely. I don't think it's worth investing much time investigating. It's not the secret of the universe or anything.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don’t have time to watch the video. But Kubrick was absolutely saying more about human attitudes toward space travel and power relationships than he was telling a story about making contact with aliens.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

To elaborate a little more. The “Monolith as screen” analogy is pretty clear. He’s making a highly conceptual point about the power of the screen to affect how people perceive the world. The narrative of human progress is a construct created by the people pointing the camera so they can stay in power.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Perhaps. To me the monolith is a black mirror. You can project whatever you like onto it in your mind's eye. How you interpret the rest of the movie is your own choice based on your own experiences gathered over a lifetime. Like any painting, the interpretation is up to you. It can be as simple or as complex as you want. Pretentious art historians or film critics might like to claim that they know better but Kubrick gave little away -I suspect deliberately. That has helped the movie to last long in the public consciousness while other movies are forgotten. The 2+5 diamond symbolism in his works from Dr Strangelove to Full Metal Jacket is curious but I very much doubt it was more than a private joke. It's not present in Eyes Wide Shut but that wasn't edited by him. I doubt that Spielberg included the motif in AI Artificial Intelligence. It would require him to have been in on the secret - I haven't checked though.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I hate it when people use the label “Pretentious”. 90% of the time they use it just to mean “High concept in a way I don’t agree with”.

It’s hard to gauge Kubrick’s intent but the more evidence you have and direct analysis you do, the less you’re just being arbitrarily subjective.

If you disagree with the analysis of a person who has studied film theory for years, do it with your own counter analysis, don’t just dismiss it as academically pretentious.

Somebody who studied a film intensively does know better than a person who watched it once or twice.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I don't need ersatz "priests of art cinema" to intercede in my attempts to interpret the works of Kubrick. If I don't understand his oeuvre to the depth that they feel they do, so be it. I don't claim that my interpretation is correct nor do I care if anyone else accepts it. I also don't want to monetise my interpretations like the guy who made the videos. Nor am I attempting to justify my pay check by preaching my interpretations to devotional scholars. Kubrick has been dead for twenty-two years, and unless some, until now unpublished, explanatory writings of his come to light, analysis of his work will remain a largely financial venture to academics. I don't pretend to understand what Kubrick was trying to represent with some aspects of his work. I believe he left aspects deliberately vague and mysterious and also playfully concocted motifs that he repeated in different films so that some people would expend large amounts of effort trying to unravel them - but I can't prove it. To pretend that one knows what Kubrick intended without strong evidence is by definition pretentious.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I hate it when people use the label “Pretentious”.

Sometimes it's deserved.

Like when people talk in excruciating detaill about wine. THAT's pretentious.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Pretentiousness can be entertaining - although we're usually laughing at the pretentious person, not with them. I don't think of earnest enthusiasm for a subject that others don't find interesting as pretentious. To me, being pretentious is simply to claim haughtily that one understands something through subjective interpretation and confirmation bias based rather than dispassionate consideration of objective evidence. It's perfectly fine to say that we don't know what was intended and that we might never know.

TV wine experts appear to base their shtick on private sensory data, inaccessible to anyone else, that they seem to exaggerate in importance to a pompous degree. I don't really like wine anyway so my opinion is biased.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I know this Youtuber. After watching the following video, I feel that he lost some balance to his perspective and is looking for things that aren't there.

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I attempted to understand him in the video posted by the OP and, at the end, gave up. I don't have the mental energy to follow him down his rabbit holes of film theory.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I haven't watched that video. I think one can gaze into the abyss too long. Apparently, he does offer paid subscriptions to his analyses of various movies and quite a few people rate him highly for his work. I have no problem with that nor with these YouTube videos that he uses to promote his other offerings. I don't feel tempted myself to subscribe. In the end, I might miss some finely nuanced insights but I've lived without them until now and I'm happy to remain in ignorance.