The music you hear over the black screen at the beginning is called the "Overture" and is not actually part of the movie. It gets included on BlueRay and so forth now because it is part of the soundtrack for the movie but it was provided for the theater to play as background music just before lowering the house lights. It was essentially "music to find your seat by" and was intended just to provide extra atmosphere. Many big budget films of the golden age of Hollywood featured an overture. Gone with the Wind, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, even Star Trek The Motion Picture had an overture.
I saw this in the theater in 1969 and that's exactly how I remember it. We walked into the theater, the curtains closed, sat in our seats. The curtains opened and the MGM logo appeared then the sunrise......awesome!
at the end of the Dawn of Man section in the book of the film ACK writes as the ape throws the bone skywards in triumph that "For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something". As the starchild appears over earth ACK repeats "For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something".
Apple took Samsung to court claiming it developed and patented iPad type devices. Samsung countered Apple didn’t and presented the court that scene in 2001 a space odyssey with the ‘pads’.. Apple lost the case.
Not exactly. The first computer that could make vocal sounds was made to sing "daisy". But this was just the voice of the actor who played Hal slowed down. You can hear a recording of the first computer that sings "Daisy" on youtube.
54:15 You got it exactly right. They explain this in the sequel, but since you figured it out yourself it wouldn't be a spoiler. HAL 9000's programming is centered around the accurate and undistorted processing of information. But when he was given full knowledge of the mission objective, and instructed not to reveal anything to Bowman or Poole, he became trapped in a logic conflict. I always felt the moment when HAL tries to confide in Dave about his misgivings of the mission, he is in his own way screaming for help. It is as if he is trying his hardest to bait Dave into asking just the right question. But rather than Dave catching on and asking the right question,... he instead did the exact opposite and asked the wrong question. Dave interpreted it as a test while writing up a crew psychology report. In this moment, HAL's last option for saving the mission and the crew was lost, at least in his mind (or programming, if you will), and he suffered a psychotic break. You will notice that immediately after the conversation, he shifts to the false failure prediction of the AE-35 communications unit, and everything starts going to hell. And then when Frank and Dave talk about disconnecting him, this then becomes a direct threat to the mission, and HAL's broken logic says they must be killed in order to protect the mission. It is interesting to think, what if Dave had instead voiced his own concern as well, and told HAL that he felt there were things about the mission he was not being informed of. Would HAL then have informed Dave that he was in fact given more information that he was told not disclose? Basically saying "Help me, Dave. I cannot function properly this way" While still adhering to his non-disclosure programming, Frank and Dave would at least then know that this conflict existed, and would have been potentially able to help him through it. Maybe even understanding that what they don't know would be revealed upon reaching their destination, further freeing HAL from his burden. I could be reading too deeply into that particular moment, but this is the kind of film that encourages you to come up with your own answers.
I’ve watched this film many many times (it’s my favourite) and I’ve had 55 years to ponder and digest it. In the Stargate sequence the monolith opens a wormhole and draws the EVA pod into, taking Dave on a journey to another part of the universe. I’m not sure if any time travel is implied. He’s taken to the world of the monolith creating aliens (who no longer have a physical form and are pure energy) and is placed in an artificial environment created from memories drawn from his mind of some hotel or another that he may have stayed in on his travels while an Astronaut. The final scenes are a very clever way of implying the passage of time and the slow transformation of him into a higher life form, a Starchild. The very end is definitely intended by Kubrick to be open to interpretation, I believe that he himself stated as such. One interesting thing to notice are the many references throughout the film to births and transformations. The dawn (birth) of man, the transformation of man into a user of weapons, his birth as a spacefaring species, the birth of artificial intelligence, Frank’s birthday, Hal’s birthday, Dr. Floyd’s daughter’s birthday, and finally humanities re-birth as a higher life form.
If you think about it ... current society is on the brink of "evolution" ... MAYBE ... at least it is my theory that: - we are in the social fight between EMOTIONAL decision making and LOGIC/REASONING based decision making AND - "autism" is a kind of "Vulcan mindset" ... basically we are in a sort of Star Trek society with some Vulcans among us SADLY ... the barbaric emotions seem to be winning ... and that is a dangerous thing, because we do have the technology to destroy the planet / make the planet unlivable.
The problem actually ISNT "the danger of AI" but rather the FLAWED HUMAN NATURE ... lying to keep secrets ->> results in bad stuff ->> more lying to keep bad stuff secret This is called "virtue SIGNALING" (pretending to be flawless and pure) instead of "actually BEING VIRTUOUS" (which includes admitting flaws and trying to FIX THEM).
The girl in the phone booth is Vivian Vanessa Kubrick, who directed at the age of 17, only some 11 years later, her father‘s movie „Making of the Shining“….
A few interesting facts about the film: The Dawn of Man sequence was filmed entirely indoors on a sound stage at Shepperton Studios, in Shepperton, Surrey, England. Only the backdrops were actual still photographs taken in Tunisia. Kubrick sent a photographer and instructed him via phone because he, Kubrick, was terrified of flying in airplanes. The little actress who portrayed the little girl on the phone is Kubrick’s daughter. The “entering the stargate” sequence was filmed conventionally using an innovative technique called side slit projection. It was so time consuming it took several months to film the 3 minute sequence, about 10 minutes per frame. Spielberg, Lucas, Cameron, have all credited this film as the prime inspiration for much of their work. It is considered by many to be the greatest film ever made.
'What location did they use?' The only location footage in 2001 is some of the shots of the apeman Moonwatcher smashing bones (the ones that look up at him), throwing the bone into the air and the bone rising and falling (the front-projection backdrop was only so high). It's real sky and clouds, really in England just outside the sound-stage, and were shot by Kubrick himself with a hand-held camera shooting high-speed. The backgrounds of Africa are very high-quality still photos taken well before the film was on the sound-stages.
My father actually saw it the opening weekend in New York. I don't know how he felt about it, but he took me to see it in a theater as soon as it hit my hometown.
I saw it on its first release in New Zealand in the mighty Cinerama theatre. I was 26 at the time, a perfect age to appreciate the technical, scientific and philosophical elements in the film. After 2001, Cinerama never repeated a film of such quality and impact ever again, so because of the expense of the new process and the fact that Cinerama movies were also released in regular prints, eventually the cinemas reverted back to the original format.
I still remember seeing this in an old-time rococo-decorated theater when it was first released. Totally blown away - it was unlike anything seen before. The innovative effects still hold up; before this space films you could see wires, lots of unrealistic noise in space where there isn't any, smoke trails from rockets, etc. Kubrick left a lot to the audience's imaginations - never spoon-fed them a cut and dried story.
The breathing sound and hissing background noise was what the character (Frank when you mentioned it) heard inside his helmet... his air being supplied and his own breathing. It was meant to make the audience feel a similar eerie and unnerving sense of isolation as that of the character.
Troglodyte is the word you're looking for. The match cut off the bone to space is actually a match cut of the first weapon, the bone, to the newest weapon, an orbiting nuclear launch platform. He entered a Stargate at the end, that took him to worlds beyond. A journey into the unknown to challenge the human mind and spirit. The monolith is the catalyst for evolutionary jumps. Dave was Human 1.0 but after the monolith he is now Human 2.0, reborn a child of the stars.
That fantastic cut from the bone to the spacecraft… It's actually suppoed to be a space-based thermonuclear missile platform. It's literally a cut from mankind's first weapon to mankind's final weapon.
Definitely read the book too. It has the same place of honor in science-fiction literature as this movie has in film. It's a surprisingly easy read, but rich with amazing storytelling.
It's even more remarkable being that this movie was made a year before we landed on the Moon. The production of this pre-Moon landing movie is better than most sci-fi films we see today and it's adherence to what space is actually like is more accurate too. The lack of action would probably turn off viewers today and that's a shame because this movie would be seriously degraded if it was all action. Despite the lack of action, you get so much information and a lot of suspense and intrigue, not to mention the sheer beauty of the shots. It's remarkable really that so much can be learned with so few words and very limited "action". Silence is used to magnificent effect here too, the silence is as "loud" as the music.
Kubrick wasn't interested in answering questions. He leaves his audience in this case to draw their own conclusions. The theme of AI isn't even significant because HAL was just following his programming. And I'm not sure you know what a serial killer sounds like- mostly they just sound like normal, innocuous people. If you're interested, this is based on a book by Arthur C. Clarke, with whom Kubrik worked closely on the story.
Clarke wrote a short story 'The Sentinel' / The Sentinel of Forever', and another story called 'Take a Deep Breath', both of which (along with his spacecraft design from his Mars novel) are referenced in this film, and he later wrote a book in parallel with the film of the same name. Also 'The Lost Worlds of 2001' which chronicles that process and includes quite a bit of material dropped from the film and book. There have also been sequels; 2010, 2061, and 3001.
There is a funny easter egg at 17:22: there was a continuation issue in the scene with the Russian scientists. When you watch closely, you will see a blue sweater on one seat miraculously vanishing during camera changes. When it was discovered during editing, Kubrick in his sense of humor added a voice line a few seconds before the scene, when Dr.Floyd walked with the station‘s security chief, making a background announcement „a blue lady‘s kashmir sweater was found….“. Stanley stood even by his very seldom mishaps.
If you think about the shape of the Monolith (rotate it 90degrees, a concept you'll see emphasised and repeated throughout the film in background details), and that it's a teaching device, the 3 minutes of black screen at the beginning middle and end of the film is very very deliberate. There's the surface story/mystery, then a subtext/secondary story that requires unpicking about hierarchy, untrustworthy authority figures and the average persons ability to expand their mind if they just shift their perspective (and cinema being a tool to enable this). It's no accident that the space station looks like a camera reel, or the astronaut is jogging within one, and the trippy sequence parallels the colour grading of previous scenes as if Dave is a piece of celluloid being processed and developed. This was the first Kubrick film that fully embraced this cryptic storytelling with multiple versions of how events play out depending on what cues you follow, but he employed this in each subsequent film and other directors have then run with that in various ways since from David Lynch, to David Fincher and most recently "The Batman" (Which is a batman story told from the perspective of the riddler, and relies on certain cinematic tricks that came directly from this film). Cheers for the reaction, dude Your question about extra footage...there was a slightly different cut released initially where there's a deliberate stutter in the film, like the reel breaks, when Dave is seeing his aging self. He's sort of pointing at the edge of the screen when he breaks the wine glass and the film stutters. Kubrick had that removed as folk thought the film was actually breaking and wasn't a deliberate part of the movie
@@jamesalexander5623Just be thankful that you weren’t high on LSD, which is what happened to a friend of mine. She said that it messed her up for quite awhile afterwards.
53:26 - You literally just summed up why this is my all-time favourite film. No other film can match or top the experience I got watching this film for the first time. Watching the last 20 minutes for the first time was akin to a spiritual experience honestly.
Bearing in mind that at the height of the race to the moon, 1 byte of memory storage was about the size of a box of pop tarts. AI was entirely theoretical when the film was made. There was talk about the potential of computers and AI, but no one was actually reliant on technology when the film was released
The link between 2001 and Lucas was a bit more substantial than you realize. The practical and optical effects in 2001 were done by Douglas Trumbull who learned his craft doing this. Uncoincidentally, Trumbull was also the one who did the practical effects for the trench runs in Star Wars.
Trumbull didn’t work on _Star Wars._ He was busy doing Spielberg’s _Close Encounters_ at the time. _Star Wars_ effects supervisor John Dykstra was a Trumbull protege.
Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 is a tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical 1883-1885 novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The composer conducted its first performance on 27 November 1896 in Frankfurt. A typical performance lasts half an hour. Previous from Wikipedia. Kubrick, for the most part, used existing music like the Blue Danube Waltz, to score 2001 after he decided this placeholder music was better than most of the score he contracted to be made for the film. Fyi from Wikipedia: The Blue Danube" is the common English title of "An der schönen blauen Donau", Op. 314, a waltz by the Austrian composer Johann Strauss II, composed in 1866.
@jamesalexander5623 Not for the composition itself as old classical compositions are considered public domain however specific performances of the works by specific orchestras is.
The Strauss piece was from a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic a few years before the film was made. I’m sure that Kubrick had to pay copyright fees to use it in the film. Not sure how it was handled by TH-cam.
19:25 The score is great and as I recall, it was all classical music, the atonal pieces composed that were in the early 1900s. 25:24 Yes, the world was outer-space crazy in the 1960s. 26:14 You're right about the production quality being so high & much better than the CGI computer geeks who are largely responsible for the discipline today.
The astronaut‘s breathing sounds were actually dubbed by Stanley himself in post to increase the feeling of anxiety in the space suits in the vastness of space…
I watched this again and it’s such a brilliant reaction! If fact I rewatched it many times, and created a playlist of 2001 reactions. You do a fantastic job, Elie, I am a huge fan, and I know there are other reactions of yours I’ve watched multiple times. Good on ‘ya!
@@eliemosesThere is a very funny reference to 2001 in Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind." I don't want to spoil it, but I promise you, you'll be nuts about that movie, and I don't believe anyone has reacted to it yet. Set a trend -- be kind -- watch "Be Kind Rewind"!
The music you mention possibly for the Godzilla trailer is the "Lux Aeterna" (for a 16-part mixed a capella choir) by György Ligeti composed in 1966. The text is from the Requiem mass: "Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis" TRANSLATION: "May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord, with thy saints in eternity, for thou art merciful. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them."
@@serinx Partly correct. The Lux Aeterna was published as a stand alone movement from the Requiem, and it's the segment Kubrick used (and made popular as a consequence). The link of the entire Requiem is fascinating, - thanks for sharing it! HOW did Kubrick encounter this piece and decide to use it so effectively?
Arthur C. Clarke was a master of science fiction. The 2001 book was written concurrently with the movie production. Clarke was so accurate with predictions about future technology, when Oumuamua arrived, I expected it to be a vessel like Rendezvous With Rama. I enjoyed 2010, 2061, and 3001 as well.
The song "Daisy Daisy" aka "Bicycle Built for Two", aka "Daisy Bell" is older than this movie, all the way from 1892: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bell Agreed, that slow wind-down of Hal is terrifying; and I've always felt the humanity in Dave saying, yes, sing the song, Hal, as he proceeds with the deactivation, all with that slight shivering. Dave is going through a great deal right now, and this understated, spare presentation is extremely strong.
It would have been a pretty well known song to theater goers back then because folk songs like that were pretty commonly taught to kids in school or on children's records.
@@LaBlueStateGirl I knew it very well by the time I saw this movie - in fact, one of our classes did a dance to it for auditorium, complete with improvised 19th century costumes.
It's almost touching how Dave humors him when he says he'd like to hear it. I think the problem with Hal is that he was programmed to be deceptive but not programmed well enough to handle the nuances of that deception. So, in a way, Hal isn't lying when he says it's attributable to human error.
@@iamamaniaint I’m beginning to wonder if HAL didn’t plan on killing everyone BEFORE the battery was seen to be “defective”. The way he begins questioning them about having doubts about the mission makes me wonder why he would even choose to ask them such a question in the first place. Did they express any doubts or confusion prior to the battery failure? Perhaps HAL only told them it failed in order to get them off of the ship so he could kill them and the people in hibernation and continue with the mission without any further human interference. Don’t forget that no HAL 9000 computer ever made a mistake. Perhaps the battery “failure” never occurred.
On a side note for context, in 1968 around Christmas there was the Apollo 8 manned mission which circled the Moon as a rehearsal for the eventual landing. That was mindblowing enough that 3 men were that far out and could view the mysterious far side of the moon up close with the naked eye. I remember the astronauts trying to describe the color detail of the moon and also reading a passage from Genesis. The Apollo 11 landing took that a big step further with humans on the moon, but Apollo 8 was spectacular in its own right, with these brave men being the first to venture beyond the gravitational influence of our Earth, and I just wanted to give it a shout out.
This movie is like an onion, it has many layers. Every time you watch it, you can see a different movie. I've seen this film dozens of times and now I realised the connection of the black intro with the rest of the film. The black monolyth is the black screen, and it is present from the very beginning to the very end. The black screen is the main character of the movie.
Went to see this spectacular in `69 (still in HS) with my older brother and his Kent pals and of course we had took the time to mellow our heads, they just couldn`t stop jawing about all the spaceship stuff and I couldn`t keep my jaw from dropping...Kubrick`s use of all the new high tech filming w/sound just captivated me and really motivated me to continue with my art training...todays gen just doesn`t have the patience to allow a Kubrick to form his scenes with just breathing, classical music and quiet ,nor do we still have intermissions for more cocktails and a lil more " hey man I`m really diggin that space floor design, man " as I recall the discussion went from the Kent crowd...so it was `68,no Moon landings, Space stations, yet Kubrick still knew we`d still have mega space projects if we found life form in the distance....IMHO Kubricks classic
The 'locations' of those amazing landscapes at the beginning of the film, were all created in the Pinewood studios in London- incredible. As was the entire film, in fact. And this is all in the mid 60s, so no steadicam ( as you felt you detected), as it wasn't invented till Kubrick's The Shining in 1980. All the spaceships are models, made with thousands of bits of plastic parts for miniature model planes etc, that the art department just stuck on to the body of the spaceships with glue. It was that basic, but looks incredible!
When this opened there were no PC's or Mac's. TV's were picture tubes. no cell phones or picture phones. No AI, no space stations. No I pads, no flat screens, this was a postcard from thirty years in the future and has never aged. My folks hated it. Watch it again and you eventually will come up with a explanation. I saw it when it opened, Cinerama Theater, New York, I was a Art Student at college at the time. Coming out of the theater, I glanced at the night sky and knew it would never look the same again. .
What you might not realize is that old films that had intermissions had intros at the beginning of the movie and at the beginning of part two (after the intermission) to give people a warning and some time to get back into there seats. ..... just like at the opera or musical theatre.
Elie,The music from 2001 you recognised was played as the soliders parachutted down to San Fransico. The scenes with the proto-humans was shot on soundstage.The screen that was projected was cover with small glass beads,making the background much brighters than in most. oh yeah that was the first Godzilla movie.
This film is in my opinion the greatest film ever made. It is far ahead of other great films. The only other director who comes even close is Ingmar Bergman. This film is like visual poetry that is meant more to be felt like a Wordsworth poem rather than understood like a scientific formula. The end sequence where Dave keeps looking at older versions of himself and his older versions looking back, made me think of mans search for meaning in life, and this "meaning" is always elusive. It is a poetic meditation on life's big questions. All great artists such as Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michelangelo aimed very high with their art; but I simply don't find such high aim or audacity in cinema. That is except for this film.
The beginning music over black screen is not some revolutionary film making technique. It’s called an overture. Its purpose is literally to “paint a picture of what is to come” and was frequently used in motion pictures of this time period. Later films would play the overture over the opening credits.
I saw this mind-blowing Experience in an ex-Cinerama theater in 1968. Early Man was presented as a barely-hanging-on band of Apes who were stimulated by a Monolith and became the Killer Ape of today. The "place holder" Classical music used by Kubrick, waiting for the commissioned soundtrack, turned into a Pop chart music phenomenon. 8:00 None of the Human actors in Ape costumes got AMPAS attention, which is/was strange. 9:00 This scene illustrated Desmond Morris' theories on the Killer Ape. 11:09 I've wondered what Johann Strauss II would make of his Blue Danube Waltz applied to man-made satellites and spacecraft. 12:20 I was very disappointed when 2001 arrived and there weren't any commercial space flights to orbital stations nor bases on the Moon. 16:18 This "telephone call" was a "jump into The Future." 18:00 This scene got a big laugh from the audience. 19:00 I've since learned that there was a copyright battle over unauthorized use of music by the still-living composer. 22:58 "What was the 'TMA-1' and what did it contact"? 24:12 Actor Douglas Rain started something with The Computer Voice Style for later movies. Did you notice that HAL 9000 has more personality than Astronauts Dave Bowman or Frank Poole? 38:33 Ahem, In Space, no one can hear you die. 39:55 Pesky Humans, be gone! 40:52 An iconic Human vs. AI conversation. 43:33 I've read that it is possible to survive in the vacuum of space...for a while. 45:26 "Daisy Bell" was the first song a computer "sang" in 1961: th-cam.com/video/41U78QP8nBk/w-d-xo.html 46:07 "2010: The Year We make Contact" (1984), answers some questions about HAL. 50:00 "Going to Hyperspace" in "Star Wars" is/was nothing compared to Dave Bowman's journey across space and time. 53:09 Rod Serling: "People are alike all over." 57:52 th-cam.com/video/FSwQ-9RPF9g/w-d-xo.html There have been discussions about this movie ever since it first played in theaters across the world. It's up to you to draw your own conclusions. Arthur C. Clarke's novelization is drawn from the screenplay, and makes for interesting reading.;)
you know what's up. I haven't read your post but i can tell your enthusiasm for the movie is like mine based on the wall of text lol.... never cared for the sequel. 2001 is everything it needs to be.... and nobody can hold a candle to kubrick. I'll read the 2010 book at some point assuming it's arthur c clarke (2001 was a quick book i might reread first)
Great reaction, I'm always interested in how our next generation of film makers view this move. It took me almost 30 years to discover another way to watch this movie. As the year 2000 approached I had a screen saver that put slides up on the monitor, and I had a stack of pictures of 2001 loaded on the computer. As the screen saver threw up images on the screen when I wasn't using my computer. Out of the corner of my eye I started to see the visual symbolism in the movie. For example, the ape scenes smashing the bones. Notice how the arrangement of the bones on the ground are reminiscent of the Discovery spaceship and the clouds of the star-gate sequence. The reflection of light in the leopards eyes like the reflection of light in HALs cameras. The little memory processor blocks of Hal are the same shape as the monolith. HAL's console includes the shape of the monolith but with a leopard's eye in it. The opening to the bay of the space station is a rectangular shape like the monolith. The lighting in the Renaissance decorated room is an upside-down version of the interior of the space-station around the Earth. There's another story layer in the imagery of the film that isn't even spoken. But it's deliberate. If you read about the making of 2001 you will find it was filmed in reverse oder, the ape-scenes were shot last, and the star gate first. Kubrick was using a old filmmaker's technique to pre-cue the audience. There's a whole other layer to this move that totally visual and it seems to be telling the story of the monolith.
The several minutes of music and black screen at the beginning is called the overture. Many films once had this, as it allowed people to gather in the auditorium. No films have this these days.
The black screen with somber background music played while the cinema lights were still on and people were settling into their seats. The intention was to put the viewer in the mood even before the movie started. The same happens during the Intermission.
I recently got done re-reading 2001, and reading 2010, 2061, and 3001. In the "Dawn on Man" in the book, the main character, Moonwatcher, is developed a lot more. And the panther(?) or whatever it is -- is a MUCH bigger part of the story. It regularly picks up a kinsman every couple of days. When Moonwatcher first thinks to move a scavenged antelope(?) kill up to his high-cliffside cave, the panther follows the blood that evening. However Moonwatcher and one of his mates desperate to protect their offspring fight back until the panther flees in confusion, as nothing had ever fought back somewhat effectively before. Moonwatcher's cave was further up on the cliff than the panther had ever gone before, and in fleeing, misjudged its leaping elevation and fell to its death. Moonwatcher affixes the beast's head to his bone club to confront the "Others" at the water hole.
Concerning the "trained apes": If you compare *Mandy Patankin and Cary Elwes* in *"The Princess Bride"* - they trained fencing for months - with the lightsaber fighting in todays DISNEY Star Wars series, you have to realise that the focus of ACTUALLY PERFORMING REALISTICALLY has been replaced by POSING and DANCING. [Without looking it up I'd say the ape actors had a lot of time practicing their behaviour ... to make it realistic.]
The reason for the black screen in the beginning is to illustrate to the audience that they themselves are participating viewing into the monolith by watching the movie. You see, the movie format, that is the screen ratio of 4 by 9, the same as that of the monolith, but just oriented horizontally!
Before a bigtime stage play, the live orchestra would usually play an "overture" of the evening's music as a signal for people in the lobby buying treats or peeing to take their seats. Then, in the middle of any long play, there would be an intermission in the middle. Usually the orchestra played during the intermission too, so people wouldn't go too far. Back in the olden days, truly major motion pictures like Ben-Hur, the Ten Commandments, and 2001 followed the stage tradition. That's what you were hearing. It was very high-class but not exactly a good example of Kubrick's creative genius. ;) This was LONG before the invention of the Pause button. Added: Music from Overtures and Intermissions also filled out movie soundtrack LP (Long Playing) phonograph albums, which were very popular.
for 1968 seeing someone 'telephone' and talk to a video of a person was outrageous...even in the 80-90 people didnt think video calls would be so available so fast ( back to the future also saw it as a future tech)
Interesting note on the use of classical music. Kubrick had been pressured by the studio to hire a composer and so he did but while an original score was being written for the film Kubrick began to favor the temporary tracks of classical music by Stauss & Wagner he's been using to work with and imagine the scenes he was filming. In the end Kubrick of course used the classical orchestral pieces that are now connected forever with the film & and at the premier the composer hired to write the original score was reportedly thoroughly embarrassed that not a one of his pieces had been used for the movie.
There's that nod to HAL in the Pixar film; WALL-E which my younger friends didn't understand. Even in Avengers: Age of Ultron, there's a hint of HAL while Ultron is learning about himself and the way he spoke. Amazing how much this film has influenced literature and film.
@@Muck006 - And Arthur C. Clarke repeatedly insisted that this was a coincidence, and they would have changed it if they had noticed. HAL stands for Heuristic ALgorithm.
The monolith isn't just a metaphor for evolution, it's the cinema screen turned sideways. There's a reason why the movie begins with nothing but a black screen while the haunting music plays. The same haunting music that's used every time someone encounters the monolith. You were staring at the monolith at the beginning of the film and you didn't even know it.
Not true. The beginning music was not on a black screen in theatres. The curtains were closed for the overture with lights set probably at half. The curtains would not have started opening until the MGM graphic hit the screen.
The key to finding the "straight up answer" to 2001 is Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th Century German philosopher best known for "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." If you learn about Nietzsche you will begin to understand 2001.
That transition was simply 4 million years in a single cut. It was our first weapon transition to our latest weapons, yes, because that satellite was supposed to be an orbital nuclear weapons platform. So the transition is also saying that humans evolved, but haven't changed much at all This is shown later too like when the men gather around the moon monolith and feel compelled to touch it, just like their hominid ancestors 4 million years before
The realistic lighting, be it in all ape scenes or the moon shuttle flight, was a secondary effect of the used front screen projection using semi permeable mirrors with the camera exactly positioned behind these mirrors in the projection axis. As they projected e.g. a blue-ish earth it gave the miniature landscape a blue tint… smart
I sure hope you have seen Dr. Strangelove or plan to. My wife's favorite movie. It is important for people to know that many people who believe in evolution are also religious. They are not incompatible. I am not sure, but if I remember correctly, the Pope has accepted the theory of evolution as a valid thing within religious belief.
When I saw this in 1969 the cinema was in dark blue light as the music played, then the curtain pulled slowly back to the curved 7omm cinemascope screen..
I am another one of those that consider 2001: A Space Odyssey the greatest film ever made. It took me years to reach that point, though because as a child my parents took me to see it and the final image of the baby floating back to Earth terrified me so much that I couldn't even look at it for years after that. Finally I got the courage to watch the movie again during my first year of college, and was completely blown away by it. During one of the re-releases, the tagline was "the more you see it, the more you see in it." It definitely influenced George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan and hundreds of other filmmakers. Your interpretation of why HAL went cuckoo is very perceptive, and has been presented as one of the explanations. The sequel is an engaging science fiction film, but to my mind has nothing to do with the original despite the return of one or two cast members.
@@eliemoses're 21 and you were wondering if this film is where richard Strauss's also aprach Zarathustra came from... you were expecting a dog to jump up and grab 'the bone' I turned the volume off before I could hear a comment about the blue Danube. I now must say goodbye to this channel. Hey there's a movie out there about a man who is like so totally a super hero but turnes into an ant sise man or something like that... literally... perhaps that would be a good one for you to react to. No cap... totally
I can give you a few answers without spoiling the sequel as you can reach some conclusions if you watch it a few times and think about it. The Monolith is not one thing. It's essentially the cosmic version of a Swiss army knife. It's main function is the cultivation of sentient life. It gave the apes a little push. The next step is on the moon that can only reached by an spacefaring civilization and activated the signal when the sun hit it and gave the hint towards Jupiter. The title of the last chapter was "Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite" and that's where Dave went through the Monolith, beyond the infinite. When he was in the room towards the end his senses evolved beyond time and space, he could see himself further down the path and also sensed his past self, but had to learn to exist with his new perception, which is why he was confused at sensing his younger self and had to look. In the end he evolved into a new kind of being, but as such, he was still only an embryo, meaning the journey goes on, not just for him, but for humanity as a whole, symbolized by his return to earth. Like I said, you can reach that conclusion by yourself, but it takes a lot of time and thinking. That's not something you come up after just watching the movie in the theatre. So yes, it is supposed to make you think. But that still leaves a lot of questions Many of them will be answered by the sequel '2010: The Year We Make Contact'. Especially one you are not asking yourself immediately. Why Jupiter? Whoever placed these Monoliths could have placed that one anywhere else in the solar system and it would have been proof that we had reached a certain level of development. So, why Jupiter?
Thank you for making this. Here are my 2 cents if anyone is interested: The subliminal and other hidden messages, Kubrick transported, are the exact opposite of what this film was sold for. After „Dr. Strangelove“ Kubrick was not loved by any western establishment, even called a communist. So he used Clarke as a hired writer and seller for his film. Kubrick had absolute control over the script. Clarke was already well known as writer, believer in transhumanism and the technical evolution of mankind, so not only studio executives, but also the US gov, NASA and many of the big involved companies trusted him. On the surface, the movie was expected to be America‘s propaganda for the space race and in order to achieve that, it had, at least in its first edition, a lot of narrative in it that explained and dumbed down everything happening. There were NASA agents present on the set, IBM supported it. But Kubrick always had his own vision and opinion: Space is extremely vast, empty and hostile. There is no place for mankind anywhere to live, AI are not to be trusted and transhumanism is an idiocy, hopefully never to be achieved. After presenting the film to the studio big wigs with almost 25 minutes of explanations and a lengthy introduction, he completely removed all the narrative to give room for spectators to see their own truth. So, imagine, after the first test screening to the executives, he really dared to re edit it completely! When IBM learned that HAL was malfunctioning and killing people, they were really pissed and demanded all logos to be removed (as far as possible), but Kubrick had this base covered long before that and hid it beneath a letter riddle (H.A.L. moved 1 letter forward in the alphabet = I.B.M.). One of the very last hidden messages was: Dave Bowman ate his first real food in a comfy suit after all technology was gone and HAL didn‘t exist anymore (in the „white room“). Before that, when mankind was still under the influence of and dominated by technocracy, everybody ate ugly mush. Another Kubrick riddle was the monolith itself, whose shape was redundantly portrayed in the movie by hundreds of rectangles of the exact same proportions. They literally were everywhere. And there were many hints that its shape has to be flipped at 90 degrees into a horizontal position to solve this riddle. These hints were for example the wormhole ride which turned from vertical to horizontal or the astronaut with his camera who took the group photo on the moon before the signal was emitted…. The shape of the monolith and its exact dimensions 1:2.76 was the cinema screen in 70mm, in which Kubrick filmed it. The white room for example didn’t have any exit, it was a trap. The first time, an exit appeared, was the appearance of the monolith in front of Dave’s death bed. In order to realize that shot, the team had to literally break the 4th wall by removing the set wall behind the bed. The monolith stood there like an exit. And Kubrick’s message behind it was: to get out of this maze which you probably won’t understand the first time watching, don’t forget, it’s a movie, projected at a screen of these dimensions. Use it to get out into reality again. But there is a lot more hidden. Of course there is. 😉
I saw this in Cinerama in Scottsdale, AZ when it came out in theaters. I was 8 or 9 at that time and it was jaw dropping to me even at that age. I’ll never forget it. 50 years later, I saw it multiple times when it came out again on the big screen for the golden anniversary. As you might imagine, you’re only getting a tiny fraction of the total experience. Btw the music in the soundtrack was not written for the movie, but curated by Kubrick himself. He was a huge classical music aficionado.
I saw this when it came out in one of the last domed great movie houses, in the Century 21 in Oakland. It had the actual triptych Cinerama projector geometry. Nothing since has come close, except for the 360 degree screen in the old Disneyland Main Street theater. I was 7 when I saw it. I'll never forget, same as the next year when the Apollo was launched.
Yeah you either get it or you dont. Some people say they don't understand it and dismiss it as rubbish. Others like you and me sense the intelligence of this film and are gripped and intrigued by it. You also love the music. Others seem deaf to it. You also appreciate the purely cinematic artistry of the film. I do too. I've always been obsessed with 2001 since I first saw it in 1968.
There are a couple of things that are not quite obvious: The pre-humans at the beginning were on the brink of starving. Just look at that desolate landscape; there's a big drought and food shortage. The big evolutionary step of using weapons to add another food source (meat) to their diet was what allowed them to survive as a species. When the pre-human throws the bone (weapon) into the air, the movie blends to a view of plenty of bone-shaped satellites. Those are weapon platforms! Dozens of countries are pointing nukes at each other. The world of 2001 is still experiencing the Cold War, and humanity is on the brink of extinction...again. So, yet another evolutionary jump is needed to survive as a species.
36:10 There might be a slight MISTAKE in the movie, because HAL is in the BRIGHTLY ILLUMINATED room, but the two astronauts are in the DARK capsule ... which typically results in light being reflected on the glass / window ... so HAL possibly couldnt have read their lips. This depends on the exact placement of the lights though.
Interestingly, the first actor hired for the voice of HAL was Martin Balsam, who played Arbogast in Psycho. Kubrick let him go after he decided that Balsam was doing the line readings with too much emotion.
I think the theme of the movie is that Aliens seed other planets with Monoliths that give a "jump start" - i.e a "fast track" evolution. So instead of the slow track, the monolith gave that 4 million yr old ape the knowledge of tools/weapons, and made his tribe "man" vs the other tribe that was still apes - so the "man" post monolith used his bone as a weapon to kill the other tribal apes. Dave was "converted" to the next level - from man to something beyond man. I think we can assume the Aliens are so advanced that even the "Superman" level Dave was converted to was just the next "fast track" of evolution, and the aliens probably have 10-100 more levels for apes/man/superman to level up through before "We" become on level with the beings that sent the monoliths.
Notice how the apes were more on 4 legs, until they touched the monolith, then became meat eaters and more bipedal, there are so many things in this film, like making up a pandemic to hide the fact they found existence of alien life so that people wouldnt panic. Hal going insane because he was told two different things that contradicted each other, the playing chess on computer in 1968, the design of the moon and the bases before they landed on the real moon,
If you pay close attention when watching Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, you can very briefly see one of the Discovery EVA Pods sitting in Watto’s junkyard.
You should have viewed this in 4k on a huge screen with 6 track sound. As close to what the original Cinerama presentation as possible. I saw it on a cinerama screen back in June of 1968. It was a magnificent experience.
the feeling freaked out by the early apes, its genetic memory, we are distrubed as way back we were underthreat i personally think most phobias are throwbacks to survival in the dim and distant past
Thanks, Elie! 🔴 I hope you'll see the sequel someday. It's called 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT (1984). It answers some questions... and introduces more mysteries. I've also read the 2 books that follow. Arthur C. Clarke was such a visionary writer. #ElieMoses #StanleyKubrick #2001ASpaceOdyssey
HAL is one letter off of IBM in the alphabet. 2010 is a follow up movie that will explain a lot about HAL actions in 2001. As a film student you should push a 2061 or 3001 movie from follow up books.
The basic idea of the film was based upon Arthur C Clarke's short story 'The Sentinel'...the book by Mr Clarke was released after the film was made...there is an interview with Kubrick from around 1980 where he actually explains what he tried to achieve in the film. If you are interested in exploring more of the master's work, you may want to check out one of the greatest anti-war film of all time 'Paths of Glory'.
I think the ape tribe at the beginning were meant to be something like Australopithecus. AKA "Lucy". This movie plays with and expands on the popular theory that some kind of higher intelligence interfered with human evolution.
As a film student, do yourself a favor and watch all the Stanley Kubrick films. He was the director, but also producer, and usually screenwriter. He also did a lot of the heavy lifting in regards to cinematography, lighting, etc. He was an independent film maker with a studio budget...and the studio was afraid of him.
The opening Black Time is setting you up for the idea of the Monolith. Interacting and learning. The monolith on the moon and orbiting Jupiter are goalposts to let the other intelligence know how far we have advanced and if we are ready for contact. This was all practical effects. Everything was built and filmed. This includes the "light show" at the end. The young girl on the phone is Stanley Kubrick's daughter. The breathing in the suit sound is also used in the movie The Graduate, both times to show the absolute "aloneness" of the situation and to help you identify with the character. I don't know the particulars, but HAL cheated in the chess game. Dave could have won but HAL ran the moves and Dave didn't think it through. There is a theme through the food in the movie. When eating real food (apes, David in the room at the end) they are growing and learning truth. When they are eating synthetic food (moon, spaceship) they are accepting and dealing with falsehoods/lies. The room for Dave was created for him by the other intelligence from his memories, designed for his comfort. The book has a different ending, which I will not spoil for you here. And yes, this film is designed to spark conversation. I saw it several times on its original release and have seen it multiple times since then. I still enjoy watching it to this day. There are those who believe this movie was the filming test for the idea that the moon landing was faked. In The Shining Danny is wearing an Apollo sweater, supposedly Kubrick's nod that he indeed had filmed the moon landing for the US. That is how much conversation this movie has generated.
The music at the start should play over the curtains in a theatre it's an overture. The curtain rises or parts at a certain point in the music, a unique MGM logo made just for this film, then suddenly we're hit with a sunrise and surging music: called 'Sunrise' from a tone poem called Also Sprach Zarathustra. This rarely happens any more.
Unlike most of today's movies, "2001" gives no direct answers. In fact, that's by design. Kubrick said in many interviews that he wasn't interested in presenting things clearly, but rather in such a vague way that it prompted people to question what it meant and come to their own conclusions. Some artists, particularly abstract, feel the same way about their art. Their response to "What does this piece mean?" is, "Whatever you think it does." However, there was a sequel movie called "2010: The Year We Make Contact", based on an Arthur C. Clarke novel, that answers several of the questions about what happened in the original film and why. While not as artistic and thought-provoking as "2001", it was widely considered at the time to be a decent movie, and I agree. It does scratch those itches about what happened in the original film and why. Which is more believable since the same author wrote both original novels.
I always kind of thought the Monolith can help Mankind break through his limitations and reach the next stage of existence. You see it with the apes, and with Dave, but Dave has reached a stage you and I can't comprehend so a lot of what he's experiencing is definitely left up to interpretation.
I like the film precisely because it dares to be different and adopts a slower pace, not something maybe you could get away with now when we are accustomed to different rhythms in general (perhaps ambient scenes and the popularity of audiobooks might signal a change in that direction to some degree, different media forms, etc.) Because it's so open to interpretation, much like you could argue the inherent mystery of the cosmos is open to interpretation, from an emotional standpoint anyway, it lends itself to application and whatever the viewer wishes to bring to it. I think Kubrick intended the film to be a musical piece in a way and said that music was a huge influence on him as a filmmaker, stating that film is much more akin to music in many ways than it is literature, and I kind of agree, as this film is very much about pure visual storytelling, much like the early silent films. It depends I suppose on how you define your relationship with film narrative as to how you engage with this film i.e. are you more drawn to dialogue, action, a quick pace, etc, or letting the film flow in a particular way without the need for explanation and kind of observing as you would observe a nature scene. I just admire the audacity and technical bravado of the filmmaking that Kubrick employed here, and for me the story is one of Dave being reborn as a higher being by travelling on this journey, far beyond any more "primitive" behaviors such as fighting for survival and so forth, which we see played out in more earlier and advanced forms. These are all separate as narratives but connected just as our species has a through-line of connection throughout history, the monolith perhaps being an embodiment of that to some degree, a representative of a higher power. The star child could be seen as a representation of a new life form that exists in harmony with the cosmos, kind of an entity with its own sovereignty (note that it floats in space with ease and a sense of being beyond whatever protection we might devise to surround ourselves with) yet with the innocence of a newborn and whatever progression and powers we might want to associate it with. Kubrick in a way is painting the nature and stillness of space by the slow pace, drawing your attention to every detail and letting your mind fill in the blanks. Stillness is the rhythm of nature, very often, thinking about mindfulness, punctuated by sudden events. and I think this film paints in these textures very well. Some other sci-fi films to check out in a similar, more cerebral vein are both versions of "Solaris" which is a much more meditative, in some ways philosophical exploration of alien life and how it could affect our interaction with the unknown and with each other, "The Day The Earth Stood Still", and "Forbidden Planet". I believe "Beyond the Black Rainbow" and "Enter the Void" are films with somewhat similar vibes to this one in terms of their surreal natures and so forth. I'm sure there are many others as well but just a few that came to me off the top of my head. Great reaction!
This film influenced everything after it, sci-fi, and otherwise. Kubrick is a marriage between the visual and the sound. You can't talk through Kubrick!
My favorite part is when Dave (when he finds a way back into the ship by blasting himself into the emergency air lock) shows that human ingenuity is still above AI. AI is nothing without human ingenuity....after all, AI is OUR creation.
The music you hear over the black screen at the beginning is called the "Overture" and is not actually part of the movie. It gets included on BlueRay and so forth now because it is part of the soundtrack for the movie but it was provided for the theater to play as background music just before lowering the house lights. It was essentially "music to find your seat by" and was intended just to provide extra atmosphere. Many big budget films of the golden age of Hollywood featured an overture. Gone with the Wind, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, even Star Trek The Motion Picture had an overture.
I saw this in the theater in 1969 and that's exactly how I remember it. We walked into the theater, the curtains closed, sat in our seats. The curtains opened and the MGM logo appeared then the sunrise......awesome!
at the end of the Dawn of Man section in the book of the film ACK writes as the ape throws the bone skywards in triumph that "For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something". As the starchild appears over earth ACK repeats "For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something".
Things that Stanley Kubrick thought would be pretty normal in the 21st century:
16:16 Video conference
23:49 AI
24:32 iPads
He he, everyone is missing those iPads.
Apple took Samsung to court claiming it developed and patented iPad type devices. Samsung countered Apple didn’t and presented the court that scene in 2001 a space odyssey with the ‘pads’.. Apple lost the case.
The song "Daisy" Hal sings was an actual recording made by one of the very first IBM computers to mimic the human voice. !
Not exactly. The first computer that could make vocal sounds was made to sing "daisy". But this was just the voice of the actor who played Hal slowed down. You can hear a recording of the first computer that sings "Daisy" on youtube.
54:15 You got it exactly right. They explain this in the sequel, but since you figured it out yourself it wouldn't be a spoiler.
HAL 9000's programming is centered around the accurate and undistorted processing of information. But when he was given full knowledge of the mission objective, and instructed not to reveal anything to Bowman or Poole, he became trapped in a logic conflict.
I always felt the moment when HAL tries to confide in Dave about his misgivings of the mission, he is in his own way screaming for help. It is as if he is trying his hardest to bait Dave into asking just the right question. But rather than Dave catching on and asking the right question,... he instead did the exact opposite and asked the wrong question. Dave interpreted it as a test while writing up a crew psychology report.
In this moment, HAL's last option for saving the mission and the crew was lost, at least in his mind (or programming, if you will), and he suffered a psychotic break. You will notice that immediately after the conversation, he shifts to the false failure prediction of the AE-35 communications unit, and everything starts going to hell. And then when Frank and Dave talk about disconnecting him, this then becomes a direct threat to the mission, and HAL's broken logic says they must be killed in order to protect the mission.
It is interesting to think, what if Dave had instead voiced his own concern as well, and told HAL that he felt there were things about the mission he was not being informed of. Would HAL then have informed Dave that he was in fact given more information that he was told not disclose? Basically saying "Help me, Dave. I cannot function properly this way"
While still adhering to his non-disclosure programming, Frank and Dave would at least then know that this conflict existed, and would have been potentially able to help him through it. Maybe even understanding that what they don't know would be revealed upon reaching their destination, further freeing HAL from his burden.
I could be reading too deeply into that particular moment, but this is the kind of film that encourages you to come up with your own answers.
I’ve watched this film many many times (it’s my favourite) and I’ve had 55 years to ponder and digest it. In the Stargate sequence the monolith opens a wormhole and draws the EVA pod into, taking Dave on a journey to another part of the universe. I’m not sure if any time travel is implied. He’s taken to the world of the monolith creating aliens (who no longer have a physical form and are pure energy) and is placed in an artificial environment created from memories drawn from his mind of some hotel or another that he may have stayed in on his travels while an Astronaut. The final scenes are a very clever way of implying the passage of time and the slow transformation of him into a higher life form, a Starchild. The very end is definitely intended by Kubrick to be open to interpretation, I believe that he himself stated as such. One interesting thing to notice are the many references throughout the film to births and transformations. The dawn (birth) of man, the transformation of man into a user of weapons, his birth as a spacefaring species, the birth of artificial intelligence, Frank’s birthday, Hal’s birthday, Dr. Floyd’s daughter’s birthday, and finally humanities re-birth as a higher life form.
If you think about it ... current society is on the brink of "evolution" ... MAYBE ... at least it is my theory that:
- we are in the social fight between EMOTIONAL decision making and LOGIC/REASONING based decision making AND
- "autism" is a kind of "Vulcan mindset" ... basically we are in a sort of Star Trek society with some Vulcans among us
SADLY ... the barbaric emotions seem to be winning ... and that is a dangerous thing, because we do have the technology to destroy the planet / make the planet unlivable.
This was way ahead of its time with respect to the dangers of AI.
The problem actually ISNT "the danger of AI" but rather the FLAWED HUMAN NATURE ...
lying to keep secrets ->> results in bad stuff ->> more lying to keep bad stuff secret
This is called "virtue SIGNALING" (pretending to be flawless and pure) instead of "actually BEING VIRTUOUS" (which includes admitting flaws and trying to FIX THEM).
The girl in the phone booth is Vivian Vanessa Kubrick, who directed at the age of 17, only some 11 years later, her father‘s movie „Making of the Shining“….
A few interesting facts about the film:
The Dawn of Man sequence was filmed entirely indoors on a sound stage at Shepperton Studios, in Shepperton, Surrey, England. Only the backdrops were actual still photographs taken in Tunisia.
Kubrick sent a photographer and instructed him via phone because he, Kubrick, was terrified of flying in airplanes.
The little actress who portrayed the little girl on the phone is Kubrick’s daughter.
The “entering the stargate” sequence was filmed conventionally using an innovative technique called side slit projection. It was so time consuming it took several months to film the 3 minute sequence, about 10 minutes per frame.
Spielberg, Lucas, Cameron, have all credited this film as the prime inspiration for much of their work. It is considered by many to be the greatest film ever made.
'What location did they use?' The only location footage in 2001 is some of the shots of the apeman Moonwatcher smashing bones (the ones that look up at him), throwing the bone into the air and the bone rising and falling (the front-projection backdrop was only so high).
It's real sky and clouds, really in England just outside the sound-stage, and were shot by Kubrick himself with a hand-held camera shooting high-speed.
The backgrounds of Africa are very high-quality still photos taken well before the film was on the sound-stages.
My father actually saw it the opening weekend in New York. I don't know how he felt about it, but he took me to see it in a theater as soon as it hit my hometown.
I saw it on its first release in New Zealand in the mighty Cinerama theatre. I was 26 at the time, a perfect age to appreciate the technical, scientific and philosophical elements in the film. After 2001, Cinerama never repeated a film of such quality and impact ever again, so because of the expense of the new process and the fact that Cinerama movies were also released in regular prints, eventually the cinemas reverted back to the original format.
I still remember seeing this in an old-time rococo-decorated theater when it was first released. Totally blown away - it was unlike anything seen before. The innovative effects still hold up; before this space films you could see wires, lots of unrealistic noise in space where there isn't any, smoke trails from rockets, etc. Kubrick left a lot to the audience's imaginations - never spoon-fed them a cut and dried story.
The breathing sound and hissing background noise was what the character (Frank when you mentioned it) heard inside his helmet... his air being supplied and his own breathing. It was meant to make the audience feel a similar eerie and unnerving sense of isolation as that of the character.
Kubrick did all the breathing adr noises.
React Shawshank Redemption if you haven’t seen it please
@@bjgandalf69 FYI, it was also Kubrick’s hand that Wendy slashed in The Shining.
Troglodyte is the word you're looking for. The match cut off the bone to space is actually a match cut of the first weapon, the bone, to the newest weapon, an orbiting nuclear launch platform. He entered a Stargate at the end, that took him to worlds beyond. A journey into the unknown to challenge the human mind and spirit. The monolith is the catalyst for evolutionary jumps. Dave was Human 1.0 but after the monolith he is now Human 2.0, reborn a child of the stars.
2023 has made this scarier. Pretty sure we'll be welcoming our overlord HAL very soon
That fantastic cut from the bone to the spacecraft… It's actually suppoed to be a space-based thermonuclear missile platform. It's literally a cut from mankind's first weapon to mankind's final weapon.
Definitely read the book too. It has the same place of honor in science-fiction literature as this movie has in film. It's a surprisingly easy read, but rich with amazing storytelling.
Daisy is actually the first automated voice that xerox programed in the 60's
It's even more remarkable being that this movie was made a year before we landed on the Moon. The production of this pre-Moon landing movie is better than most sci-fi films we see today and it's adherence to what space is actually like is more accurate too. The lack of action would probably turn off viewers today and that's a shame because this movie would be seriously degraded if it was all action. Despite the lack of action, you get so much information and a lot of suspense and intrigue, not to mention the sheer beauty of the shots. It's remarkable really that so much can be learned with so few words and very limited "action". Silence is used to magnificent effect here too, the silence is as "loud" as the music.
Kubrick wasn't interested in answering questions. He leaves his audience in this case to draw their own conclusions. The theme of AI isn't even significant because HAL was just following his programming. And I'm not sure you know what a serial killer sounds like- mostly they just sound like normal, innocuous people. If you're interested, this is based on a book by Arthur C. Clarke, with whom Kubrik worked closely on the story.
Clarke wrote a short story 'The Sentinel' / The Sentinel of Forever', and another story called 'Take a Deep Breath', both of which (along with his spacecraft design from his Mars novel) are referenced in this film, and he later wrote a book in parallel with the film of the same name.
Also 'The Lost Worlds of 2001' which chronicles that process and includes quite a bit of material dropped from the film and book.
There have also been sequels; 2010, 2061, and 3001.
There is a funny easter egg at 17:22: there was a continuation issue in the scene with the Russian scientists. When you watch closely, you will see a blue sweater on one seat miraculously vanishing during camera changes. When it was discovered during editing, Kubrick in his sense of humor added a voice line a few seconds before the scene, when Dr.Floyd walked with the station‘s security chief, making a background announcement „a blue lady‘s kashmir sweater was found….“. Stanley stood even by his very seldom mishaps.
If you think about the shape of the Monolith (rotate it 90degrees, a concept you'll see emphasised and repeated throughout the film in background details), and that it's a teaching device, the 3 minutes of black screen at the beginning middle and end of the film is very very deliberate. There's the surface story/mystery, then a subtext/secondary story that requires unpicking about hierarchy, untrustworthy authority figures and the average persons ability to expand their mind if they just shift their perspective (and cinema being a tool to enable this). It's no accident that the space station looks like a camera reel, or the astronaut is jogging within one, and the trippy sequence parallels the colour grading of previous scenes as if Dave is a piece of celluloid being processed and developed. This was the first Kubrick film that fully embraced this cryptic storytelling with multiple versions of how events play out depending on what cues you follow, but he employed this in each subsequent film and other directors have then run with that in various ways since from David Lynch, to David Fincher and most recently "The Batman" (Which is a batman story told from the perspective of the riddler, and relies on certain cinematic tricks that came directly from this film).
Cheers for the reaction, dude
Your question about extra footage...there was a slightly different cut released initially where there's a deliberate stutter in the film, like the reel breaks, when Dave is seeing his aging self. He's sort of pointing at the edge of the screen when he breaks the wine glass and the film stutters. Kubrick had that removed as folk thought the film was actually breaking and wasn't a deliberate part of the movie
"So...World War I wasn't in 1914."
You almost got a spit-take out of me on that one, Elie.
Best. Mike.
I saw 2001 in the theater when I was 11 (mid 1980's). It blew my freaking mind.
Saw it the Day it Premiered,on a Huge Screen, I was 16 and slightly Intoxicated!
@@jamesalexander5623Just be thankful that you weren’t high on LSD, which is what happened to a friend of mine. She said that it messed her up for quite awhile afterwards.
Lucky
Lawrence of Arabia has a 7 minute Ouverture ... with a black screen.
53:26 - You literally just summed up why this is my all-time favourite film. No other film can match or top the experience I got watching this film for the first time. Watching the last 20 minutes for the first time was akin to a spiritual experience honestly.
The music at the intro of the Jupiter sequence is so beautiful, but yet so lonely. It perfectly imagines how I bet space would feel
Bearing in mind that at the height of the race to the moon, 1 byte of memory storage was about the size of a box of pop tarts. AI was entirely theoretical when the film was made.
There was talk about the potential of computers and AI, but no one was actually reliant on technology when the film was released
The link between 2001 and Lucas was a bit more substantial than you realize. The practical and optical effects in 2001 were done by Douglas Trumbull who learned his craft doing this. Uncoincidentally, Trumbull was also the one who did the practical effects for the trench runs in Star Wars.
Trumbull didn’t work on _Star Wars._ He was busy doing Spielberg’s _Close Encounters_ at the time.
_Star Wars_ effects supervisor John Dykstra was a Trumbull protege.
When HAL was reading their lips I kinda had a similar scary feeling to when Wendy finally looked at Jack’s writing in The Shining 😱
Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 is a tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical 1883-1885 novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The composer conducted its first performance on 27 November 1896 in Frankfurt. A typical performance lasts half an hour. Previous from Wikipedia. Kubrick, for the most part, used existing music like the Blue Danube Waltz, to score 2001 after he decided this placeholder music was better than most of the score he contracted to be made for the film. Fyi from Wikipedia: The Blue Danube" is the common English title of "An der schönen blauen Donau", Op. 314, a waltz by the Austrian composer Johann Strauss II, composed in 1866.
Being it's Classical Music I don't think there's any Copyright problem?
@jamesalexander5623 Not for the composition itself as old classical compositions are considered public domain however specific performances of the works by specific orchestras is.
@@jamesalexander5623 That wouldn't apply to the Ligeti compositions, obviously. Not sure about the Katchaturian.
The Strauss piece was from a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic a few years before the film was made. I’m sure that Kubrick had to pay copyright fees to use it in the film. Not sure how it was handled by TH-cam.
19:25 The score is great and as I recall, it was all classical music, the atonal pieces composed that were in the early 1900s. 25:24 Yes, the world was outer-space crazy in the 1960s. 26:14 You're right about the production quality being so high & much better than the CGI computer geeks who are largely responsible for the discipline today.
The astronaut‘s breathing sounds were actually dubbed by Stanley himself in post to increase the feeling of anxiety in the space suits in the vastness of space…
HAL terminating the crew for the sake of the mission is repeated by Ash in Alien.
I watched this again and it’s such a brilliant reaction! If fact I rewatched it many times, and created a playlist of 2001 reactions. You do a fantastic job, Elie, I am a huge fan, and I know there are other reactions of yours I’ve watched multiple times. Good on ‘ya!
Thank you soo much Paul ❤️❤️
@@eliemosesThere is a very funny reference to 2001 in Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind." I don't want to spoil it, but I promise you, you'll be nuts about that movie, and I don't believe anyone has reacted to it yet. Set a trend -- be kind -- watch "Be Kind Rewind"!
2010 the year we make contact .... is a good sequel.....Peace!
The music you mention possibly for the Godzilla trailer is the "Lux Aeterna" (for a 16-part mixed a capella choir) by György Ligeti composed in 1966. The text is from the Requiem mass: "Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis" TRANSLATION: "May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord, with thy saints in eternity, for thou art merciful. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them."
I think close, but maybe this instead ("Requiem") -- th-cam.com/video/wqrJmxy4q3A/w-d-xo.html
@@serinx Partly correct. The Lux Aeterna was published as a stand alone movement from the Requiem, and it's the segment Kubrick used (and made popular as a consequence). The link of the entire Requiem is fascinating, - thanks for sharing it! HOW did Kubrick encounter this piece and decide to use it so effectively?
Kubrick spent 4 years making this film, and employed two consultants from NASA to make sure details were as realistic as possible.
Arthur C. Clarke was a master of science fiction. The 2001 book was written concurrently with the movie production. Clarke was so accurate with predictions about future technology, when Oumuamua arrived, I expected it to be a vessel like Rendezvous With Rama. I enjoyed 2010, 2061, and 3001 as well.
There was quite a striking similarity to Rendezvous with Rama.
I surely would have liked that.
The song "Daisy Daisy" aka "Bicycle Built for Two", aka "Daisy Bell" is older than this movie, all the way from 1892: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bell
Agreed, that slow wind-down of Hal is terrifying; and I've always felt the humanity in Dave saying, yes, sing the song, Hal, as he proceeds with the deactivation, all with that slight shivering. Dave is going through a great deal right now, and this understated, spare presentation is extremely strong.
It would have been a pretty well known song to theater goers back then because folk songs like that were pretty commonly taught to kids in school or on children's records.
@@LaBlueStateGirl I knew it very well by the time I saw this movie - in fact, one of our classes did a dance to it for auditorium, complete with improvised 19th century costumes.
It's almost touching how Dave humors him when he says he'd like to hear it.
I think the problem with Hal is that he was programmed to be deceptive but not programmed well enough to handle the nuances of that deception.
So, in a way, Hal isn't lying when he says it's attributable to human error.
@@iamamaniaint And of course, ultimately HAL is a human creation, however elevated.
@@iamamaniaint I’m beginning to wonder if HAL didn’t plan on killing everyone BEFORE the battery was seen to be “defective”. The way he begins questioning them about having doubts about the mission makes me wonder why he would even choose to ask them such a question in the first place. Did they express any doubts or confusion prior to the battery failure? Perhaps HAL only told them it failed in order to get them off of the ship so he could kill them and the people in hibernation and continue with the mission without any further human interference. Don’t forget that no HAL 9000 computer ever made a mistake. Perhaps the battery “failure” never occurred.
My favorite movie of all-time. Makes me happy to see you enjoy and appreciate it. Keep up the great work.
On a side note for context, in 1968 around Christmas there was the Apollo 8 manned mission which circled the Moon as a rehearsal for the eventual landing. That was mindblowing enough that 3 men were that far out and could view the mysterious far side of the moon up close with the naked eye. I remember the astronauts trying to describe the color detail of the moon and also reading a passage from Genesis. The Apollo 11 landing took that a big step further with humans on the moon, but Apollo 8 was spectacular in its own right, with these brave men being the first to venture beyond the gravitational influence of our Earth, and I just wanted to give it a shout out.
This movie is like an onion, it has many layers. Every time you watch it, you can see a different movie. I've seen this film dozens of times and now I realised the connection of the black intro with the rest of the film. The black monolyth is the black screen, and it is present from the very beginning to the very end. The black screen is the main character of the movie.
Went to see this spectacular in `69 (still in HS) with my older brother and his Kent pals and of course we had took the time to mellow our heads, they just couldn`t stop jawing about all the spaceship stuff and I couldn`t keep my jaw from dropping...Kubrick`s use of all the new high tech filming w/sound just captivated me and really motivated me to continue with my art training...todays gen just doesn`t have the patience to allow a Kubrick to form his scenes with just breathing, classical music and quiet ,nor do we still have intermissions for more cocktails and a lil more " hey man I`m really diggin that space floor design, man " as I recall the discussion went from the Kent crowd...so it was `68,no Moon landings, Space stations, yet Kubrick still knew we`d still have mega space projects if we found life form in the distance....IMHO Kubricks classic
The 'locations' of those amazing landscapes at the beginning of the film, were all created in the Pinewood studios in London- incredible. As was the entire film, in fact. And this is all in the mid 60s, so no steadicam ( as you felt you detected), as it wasn't invented till Kubrick's The Shining in 1980. All the spaceships are models, made with thousands of bits of plastic parts for miniature model planes etc, that the art department just stuck on to the body of the spaceships with glue. It was that basic, but looks incredible!
When this opened there were no PC's or Mac's. TV's were picture tubes. no cell phones or picture phones. No AI, no space stations. No I pads, no flat screens, this was a postcard from thirty years in the future and has never aged. My folks hated it. Watch it again and you eventually will come up with a explanation. I saw it when it opened, Cinerama Theater, New York, I was a Art Student at college at the time. Coming out of the theater, I glanced at the night sky and knew it would never look the same again. .
What you might not realize is that old films that had intermissions had intros at the beginning of the movie and at the beginning of part two (after the intermission) to give people a warning and some time to get back into there seats. ..... just like at the opera or musical theatre.
Elie,The music from 2001 you recognised was played as the soliders parachutted down to San Fransico. The scenes with the proto-humans was shot on soundstage.The screen that was projected was cover with small glass beads,making the background much brighters than in most. oh yeah that was the first Godzilla movie.
This film is in my opinion the greatest film ever made. It is far ahead of other great films. The only other director who comes even close is Ingmar Bergman. This film is like visual poetry that is meant more to be felt like a Wordsworth poem rather than understood like a scientific formula. The end sequence where Dave keeps looking at older versions of himself and his older versions looking back, made me think of mans search for meaning in life, and this "meaning" is always elusive. It is a poetic meditation on life's big questions. All great artists such as Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michelangelo aimed very high with their art; but I simply don't find such high aim or audacity in cinema. That is except for this film.
Perfect assessment... and I'm with you on the greatest film opinion.
I do. There are other great films which I think also qualify as great art. “Lawrence Of Arabia” would be one example.
Ape. Man. Overman. It's a homage to Nietzsche with an AI gone wrong subplot.
THIS is why i love your channel. You are a cinema fan like myself. I wept at this
Much appreciated
The beginning music over black screen is not some revolutionary film making technique. It’s called an overture. Its purpose is literally to “paint a picture of what is to come” and was frequently used in motion pictures of this time period.
Later films would play the overture over the opening credits.
I saw this mind-blowing Experience in an ex-Cinerama theater in 1968. Early Man was presented as a barely-hanging-on band of Apes who were stimulated by a Monolith and became the Killer Ape of today. The "place holder" Classical music used by Kubrick, waiting for the commissioned soundtrack, turned into a Pop chart music phenomenon. 8:00 None of the Human actors in Ape costumes got AMPAS attention, which is/was strange. 9:00 This scene illustrated Desmond Morris' theories on the Killer Ape. 11:09 I've wondered what Johann Strauss II would make of his Blue Danube Waltz applied to man-made satellites and spacecraft. 12:20 I was very disappointed when 2001 arrived and there weren't any commercial space flights to orbital stations nor bases on the Moon. 16:18 This "telephone call" was a "jump into The Future." 18:00 This scene got a big laugh from the audience. 19:00 I've since learned that there was a copyright battle over unauthorized use of music by the still-living composer. 22:58 "What was the 'TMA-1' and what did it contact"? 24:12 Actor Douglas Rain started something with The Computer Voice Style for later movies. Did you notice that HAL 9000 has more personality than Astronauts Dave Bowman or Frank Poole? 38:33 Ahem, In Space, no one can hear you die. 39:55 Pesky Humans, be gone! 40:52 An iconic Human vs. AI conversation. 43:33 I've read that it is possible to survive in the vacuum of space...for a while. 45:26 "Daisy Bell" was the first song a computer "sang" in 1961: th-cam.com/video/41U78QP8nBk/w-d-xo.html 46:07 "2010: The Year We make Contact" (1984), answers some questions about HAL. 50:00 "Going to Hyperspace" in "Star Wars" is/was nothing compared to Dave Bowman's journey across space and time. 53:09 Rod Serling: "People are alike all over." 57:52 th-cam.com/video/FSwQ-9RPF9g/w-d-xo.html There have been discussions about this movie ever since it first played in theaters across the world. It's up to you to draw your own conclusions. Arthur C. Clarke's novelization is drawn from the screenplay, and makes for interesting reading.;)
you know what's up. I haven't read your post but i can tell your enthusiasm for the movie is like mine based on the wall of text lol.... never cared for the sequel. 2001 is everything it needs to be.... and nobody can hold a candle to kubrick. I'll read the 2010 book at some point assuming it's arthur c clarke (2001 was a quick book i might reread first)
Great reaction, I'm always interested in how our next generation of film makers view this move. It took me almost 30 years to discover another way to watch this movie. As the year 2000 approached I had a screen saver that put slides up on the monitor, and I had a stack of pictures of 2001 loaded on the computer. As the screen saver threw up images on the screen when I wasn't using my computer. Out of the corner of my eye I started to see the visual symbolism in the movie. For example, the ape scenes smashing the bones. Notice how the arrangement of the bones on the ground are reminiscent of the Discovery spaceship and the clouds of the star-gate sequence. The reflection of light in the leopards eyes like the reflection of light in HALs cameras. The little memory processor blocks of Hal are the same shape as the monolith. HAL's console includes the shape of the monolith but with a leopard's eye in it. The opening to the bay of the space station is a rectangular shape like the monolith. The lighting in the Renaissance decorated room is an upside-down version of the interior of the space-station around the Earth. There's another story layer in the imagery of the film that isn't even spoken. But it's deliberate. If you read about the making of 2001 you will find it was filmed in reverse oder, the ape-scenes were shot last, and the star gate first. Kubrick was using a old filmmaker's technique to pre-cue the audience. There's a whole other layer to this move that totally visual and it seems to be telling the story of the monolith.
"I don't know whether to feel triumphant or freaked out." Congratulations, you have "understood" the movie.
The several minutes of music and black screen at the beginning is called the overture. Many films once had this, as it allowed people to gather in the auditorium. No films have this these days.
The black screen with somber background music played while the cinema lights were still on and people were settling into their seats. The intention was to put the viewer in the mood even before the movie started. The same happens during the Intermission.
I recently got done re-reading 2001, and reading 2010, 2061, and 3001. In the "Dawn on Man" in the book, the main character, Moonwatcher, is developed a lot more. And the panther(?) or whatever it is -- is a MUCH bigger part of the story. It regularly picks up a kinsman every couple of days. When Moonwatcher first thinks to move a scavenged antelope(?) kill up to his high-cliffside cave, the panther follows the blood that evening. However Moonwatcher and one of his mates desperate to protect their offspring fight back until the panther flees in confusion, as nothing had ever fought back somewhat effectively before. Moonwatcher's cave was further up on the cliff than the panther had ever gone before, and in fleeing, misjudged its leaping elevation and fell to its death. Moonwatcher affixes the beast's head to his bone club to confront the "Others" at the water hole.
Concerning the "trained apes":
If you compare *Mandy Patankin and Cary Elwes* in *"The Princess Bride"* - they trained fencing for months - with the lightsaber fighting in todays DISNEY Star Wars series, you have to realise that the focus of ACTUALLY PERFORMING REALISTICALLY has been replaced by POSING and DANCING.
[Without looking it up I'd say the ape actors had a lot of time practicing their behaviour ... to make it realistic.]
The reason for the black screen in the beginning is to illustrate to the audience that they themselves are participating viewing into the monolith by watching the movie. You see, the movie format, that is the screen ratio of 4 by 9, the same as that of the monolith, but just oriented horizontally!
Before a bigtime stage play, the live orchestra would usually play an "overture" of the evening's music as a signal for people in the lobby buying treats or peeing to take their seats. Then, in the middle of any long play, there would be an intermission in the middle. Usually the orchestra played during the intermission too, so people wouldn't go too far.
Back in the olden days, truly major motion pictures like Ben-Hur, the Ten Commandments, and 2001 followed the stage tradition. That's what you were hearing. It was very high-class but not exactly a good example of Kubrick's creative genius. ;) This was LONG before the invention of the Pause button.
Added: Music from Overtures and Intermissions also filled out movie soundtrack LP (Long Playing) phonograph albums, which were very popular.
for 1968 seeing someone 'telephone' and talk to a video of a person was outrageous...even in the 80-90 people didnt think video calls would be so available so fast ( back to the future also saw it as a future tech)
Interesting note on the use of classical music. Kubrick had been pressured by the studio to hire a composer and so he did but while an original score was being written for the film Kubrick began to favor the temporary tracks of classical music by Stauss & Wagner he's been using to work with and imagine the scenes he was filming. In the end Kubrick of course used the classical orchestral pieces that are now connected forever with the film & and at the premier the composer hired to write the original score was reportedly thoroughly embarrassed that not a one of his pieces had been used for the movie.
There's that nod to HAL in the Pixar film; WALL-E which my younger friends didn't understand. Even in Avengers: Age of Ultron, there's a hint of HAL while Ultron is learning about himself and the way he spoke. Amazing how much this film has influenced literature and film.
There are also nods to 2001 in the recent Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3.
H = I minus 1
A = B minus 1
L = M minus 1
... IBM
@@Muck006 - And Arthur C. Clarke repeatedly insisted that this was a coincidence, and they would have changed it if they had noticed. HAL stands for Heuristic ALgorithm.
The monolith isn't just a metaphor for evolution, it's the cinema screen turned sideways. There's a reason why the movie begins with nothing but a black screen while the haunting music plays. The same haunting music that's used every time someone encounters the monolith. You were staring at the monolith at the beginning of the film and you didn't even know it.
Not true. The beginning music was not on a black screen in theatres. The curtains were closed for the overture with lights set probably at half. The curtains would not have started opening until the MGM graphic hit the screen.
The key to finding the "straight up answer" to 2001 is Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th Century German philosopher best known for "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." If you learn about Nietzsche you will begin to understand 2001.
That transition was simply 4 million years in a single cut.
It was our first weapon transition to our latest weapons, yes, because that satellite was supposed to be an orbital nuclear weapons platform.
So the transition is also saying that humans evolved, but haven't changed much at all
This is shown later too like when the men gather around the moon monolith and feel compelled to touch it, just like their hominid ancestors 4 million years before
The realistic lighting, be it in all ape scenes or the moon shuttle flight, was a secondary effect of the used front screen projection using semi permeable mirrors with the camera exactly positioned behind these mirrors in the projection axis. As they projected e.g. a blue-ish earth it gave the miniature landscape a blue tint… smart
I sure hope you have seen Dr. Strangelove or plan to. My wife's favorite movie.
It is important for people to know that many people who believe in evolution are also religious. They are not incompatible. I am not sure, but if I remember correctly, the Pope has accepted the theory of evolution as a valid thing within religious belief.
When I saw this in 1969 the cinema was in dark blue light as the music played, then the curtain pulled slowly back to the curved 7omm cinemascope screen..
I am another one of those that consider 2001: A Space Odyssey the greatest film ever made. It took me years to reach that point, though because as a child my parents took me to see it and the final image of the baby floating back to Earth terrified me so much that I couldn't even look at it for years after that. Finally I got the courage to watch the movie again during my first year of college, and was completely blown away by it. During one of the re-releases, the tagline was "the more you see it, the more you see in it." It definitely influenced George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan and hundreds of other filmmakers. Your interpretation of why HAL went cuckoo is very perceptive, and has been presented as one of the explanations. The sequel is an engaging science fiction film, but to my mind has nothing to do with the original despite the return of one or two cast members.
Thank you soo muccc!!!!
@@eliemoses're 21 and you were wondering if this film is where richard Strauss's also aprach Zarathustra came from... you were expecting a dog to jump up and grab 'the bone' I turned the volume off before I could hear a comment about the blue Danube. I now must say goodbye to this channel. Hey there's a movie out there about a man who is like so totally a super hero but turnes into an ant sise man or something like that... literally... perhaps that would be a good one for you to react to. No cap... totally
I can give you a few answers without spoiling the sequel as you can reach some conclusions if you watch it a few times and think about it. The Monolith is not one thing. It's essentially the cosmic version of a Swiss army knife. It's main function is the cultivation of sentient life. It gave the apes a little push. The next step is on the moon that can only reached by an spacefaring civilization and activated the signal when the sun hit it and gave the hint towards Jupiter. The title of the last chapter was "Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite" and that's where Dave went through the Monolith, beyond the infinite. When he was in the room towards the end his senses evolved beyond time and space, he could see himself further down the path and also sensed his past self, but had to learn to exist with his new perception, which is why he was confused at sensing his younger self and had to look. In the end he evolved into a new kind of being, but as such, he was still only an embryo, meaning the journey goes on, not just for him, but for humanity as a whole, symbolized by his return to earth.
Like I said, you can reach that conclusion by yourself, but it takes a lot of time and thinking. That's not something you come up after just watching the movie in the theatre. So yes, it is supposed to make you think.
But that still leaves a lot of questions Many of them will be answered by the sequel '2010: The Year We Make Contact'. Especially one you are not asking yourself immediately. Why Jupiter? Whoever placed these Monoliths could have placed that one anywhere else in the solar system and it would have been proof that we had reached a certain level of development. So, why Jupiter?
Thank you for making this. Here are my 2 cents if anyone is interested:
The subliminal and other hidden messages, Kubrick transported, are the exact opposite of what this film was sold for. After „Dr. Strangelove“ Kubrick was not loved by any western establishment, even called a communist. So he used Clarke as a hired writer and seller for his film. Kubrick had absolute control over the script. Clarke was already well known as writer, believer in transhumanism and the technical evolution of mankind, so not only studio executives, but also the US gov, NASA and many of the big involved companies trusted him. On the surface, the movie was expected to be America‘s propaganda for the space race and in order to achieve that, it had, at least in its first edition, a lot of narrative in it that explained and dumbed down everything happening. There were NASA agents present on the set, IBM supported it. But Kubrick always had his own vision and opinion: Space is extremely vast, empty and hostile. There is no place for mankind anywhere to live, AI are not to be trusted and transhumanism is an idiocy, hopefully never to be achieved. After presenting the film to the studio big wigs with almost 25 minutes of explanations and a lengthy introduction, he completely removed all the narrative to give room for spectators to see their own truth. So, imagine, after the first test screening to the executives, he really dared to re edit it completely! When IBM learned that HAL was malfunctioning and killing people, they were really pissed and demanded all logos to be removed (as far as possible), but Kubrick had this base covered long before that and hid it beneath a letter riddle (H.A.L. moved 1 letter forward in the alphabet = I.B.M.). One of the very last hidden messages was: Dave Bowman ate his first real food in a comfy suit after all technology was gone and HAL didn‘t exist anymore (in the „white room“). Before that, when mankind was still under the influence of and dominated by technocracy, everybody ate ugly mush.
Another Kubrick riddle was the monolith itself, whose shape was redundantly portrayed in the movie by hundreds of rectangles of the exact same proportions. They literally were everywhere. And there were many hints that its shape has to be flipped at 90 degrees into a horizontal position to solve this riddle. These hints were for example the wormhole ride which turned from vertical to horizontal or the astronaut with his camera who took the group photo on the moon before the signal was emitted…. The shape of the monolith and its exact dimensions 1:2.76 was the cinema screen in 70mm, in which Kubrick filmed it. The white room for example didn’t have any exit, it was a trap. The first time, an exit appeared, was the appearance of the monolith in front of Dave’s death bed. In order to realize that shot, the team had to literally break the 4th wall by removing the set wall behind the bed. The monolith stood there like an exit. And Kubrick’s message behind it was: to get out of this maze which you probably won’t understand the first time watching, don’t forget, it’s a movie, projected at a screen of these dimensions. Use it to get out into reality again.
But there is a lot more hidden. Of course there is. 😉
Kubrick had a cameo - he performed all the Discovery EVA helmet-breathing. Best. Mike.
I saw this in Cinerama in Scottsdale, AZ when it came out in theaters. I was 8 or 9 at that time and it was jaw dropping to me even at that age. I’ll never forget it. 50 years later, I saw it multiple times when it came out again on the big screen for the golden anniversary. As you might imagine, you’re only getting a tiny fraction of the total experience. Btw the music in the soundtrack was not written for the movie, but curated by Kubrick himself. He was a huge classical music aficionado.
I saw this when it came out in one of the last domed great movie houses, in the Century 21 in Oakland. It had the actual triptych Cinerama projector geometry. Nothing since has come close, except for the 360 degree screen in the old Disneyland Main Street theater. I was 7 when I saw it. I'll never forget, same as the next year when the Apollo was launched.
Yeah you either get it or you dont. Some people say they don't understand it and dismiss it as rubbish. Others like you and me sense the intelligence of this film and are gripped and intrigued by it. You also love the music. Others seem deaf to it. You also appreciate the purely cinematic artistry of the film. I do too. I've always been obsessed with 2001 since I first saw it in 1968.
There are a couple of things that are not quite obvious:
The pre-humans at the beginning were on the brink of starving. Just look at that desolate landscape; there's a big drought and food shortage. The big evolutionary step of using weapons to add another food source (meat) to their diet was what allowed them to survive as a species.
When the pre-human throws the bone (weapon) into the air, the movie blends to a view of plenty of bone-shaped satellites. Those are weapon platforms! Dozens of countries are pointing nukes at each other. The world of 2001 is still experiencing the Cold War, and humanity is on the brink of extinction...again. So, yet another evolutionary jump is needed to survive as a species.
36:10 There might be a slight MISTAKE in the movie, because HAL is in the BRIGHTLY ILLUMINATED room, but the two astronauts are in the DARK capsule ... which typically results in light being reflected on the glass / window ... so HAL possibly couldnt have read their lips. This depends on the exact placement of the lights though.
HAL's voice mannerisms do somewhat remind me of Norman Bates from Psycho (1960).
Interestingly, the first actor hired for the voice of HAL was Martin Balsam, who played Arbogast in Psycho. Kubrick let him go after he decided that Balsam was doing the line readings with too much emotion.
I think the theme of the movie is that Aliens seed other planets with Monoliths that give a "jump start" - i.e a "fast track" evolution. So instead of the slow track, the monolith gave that 4 million yr old ape the knowledge of tools/weapons, and made his tribe "man" vs the other tribe that was still apes - so the "man" post monolith used his bone as a weapon to kill the other tribal apes.
Dave was "converted" to the next level - from man to something beyond man.
I think we can assume the Aliens are so advanced that even the "Superman" level Dave was converted to was just the next "fast track" of evolution, and the aliens probably have 10-100 more levels for apes/man/superman to level up through before "We" become on level with the beings that sent the monoliths.
Dude, read the book, all your questions will be answered! Absolute masterpiece.
Don't forget Barry Lyndon, for goodness' sake. And Dr Strangelove, sadly more relevant today than in a long time..
Notice how the apes were more on 4 legs, until they touched the monolith, then became meat eaters and more bipedal, there are so many things in this film, like making up a pandemic to hide the fact they found existence of alien life so that people wouldnt panic. Hal going insane because he was told two different things that contradicted each other, the playing chess on computer in 1968, the design of the moon and the bases before they landed on the real moon,
The monotone voice of hal, but you can hear emotions in it
If you pay close attention when watching Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, you can very briefly see one of the Discovery EVA Pods sitting in Watto’s junkyard.
You should have viewed this in 4k on a huge screen with 6 track sound. As close to what the original Cinerama presentation as possible. I saw it on a cinerama screen back in June of 1968. It was a magnificent experience.
the feeling freaked out by the early apes, its genetic memory, we are distrubed as way back we were underthreat i personally think most phobias are throwbacks to survival in the dim and distant past
Thanks, Elie! 🔴 I hope you'll see the sequel someday. It's called 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT (1984). It answers some questions... and introduces more mysteries. I've also read the 2 books that follow. Arthur C. Clarke was such a visionary writer. #ElieMoses #StanleyKubrick #2001ASpaceOdyssey
Another thing- when I saw that moment in Clockwork Orange when Alex attacks his Droogs ? How it rang with the Ape scenes...
HAL is one letter off of IBM in the alphabet. 2010 is a follow up movie that will explain a lot about HAL actions in 2001. As a film student you should push a 2061 or 3001 movie from follow up books.
The basic idea of the film was based upon Arthur C Clarke's short story 'The Sentinel'...the book by Mr Clarke was released after the film was made...there is an interview with Kubrick from around 1980 where he actually explains what he tried to achieve in the film. If you are interested in exploring more of the master's work, you may want to check out one of the greatest anti-war film of all time 'Paths of Glory'.
I think the ape tribe at the beginning were meant to be something like Australopithecus. AKA "Lucy". This movie plays with and expands on the popular theory that some kind of higher intelligence interfered with human evolution.
One interesting theory is that we aren’t looking into a black screen at the beginning but actually staring at the monolith itself turned sideways.
Wouldn't suprise me hahaha
As a film student, do yourself a favor and watch all the Stanley Kubrick films. He was the director, but also producer, and usually screenwriter. He also did a lot of the heavy lifting in regards to cinematography, lighting, etc. He was an independent film maker with a studio budget...and the studio was afraid of him.
The opening Black Time is setting you up for the idea of the Monolith. Interacting and learning. The monolith on the moon and orbiting Jupiter are goalposts to let the other intelligence know how far we have advanced and if we are ready for contact. This was all practical effects. Everything was built and filmed. This includes the "light show" at the end. The young girl on the phone is Stanley Kubrick's daughter. The breathing in the suit sound is also used in the movie The Graduate, both times to show the absolute "aloneness" of the situation and to help you identify with the character. I don't know the particulars, but HAL cheated in the chess game. Dave could have won but HAL ran the moves and Dave didn't think it through. There is a theme through the food in the movie. When eating real food (apes, David in the room at the end) they are growing and learning truth. When they are eating synthetic food (moon, spaceship) they are accepting and dealing with falsehoods/lies. The room for Dave was created for him by the other intelligence from his memories, designed for his comfort. The book has a different ending, which I will not spoil for you here. And yes, this film is designed to spark conversation. I saw it several times on its original release and have seen it multiple times since then. I still enjoy watching it to this day. There are those who believe this movie was the filming test for the idea that the moon landing was faked. In The Shining Danny is wearing an Apollo sweater, supposedly Kubrick's nod that he indeed had filmed the moon landing for the US. That is how much conversation this movie has generated.
The music at the start should play over the curtains in a theatre it's an overture. The curtain rises or parts at a certain point in the music, a unique MGM logo made just for this film, then suddenly we're hit with a sunrise and surging music: called 'Sunrise' from a tone poem called Also Sprach Zarathustra.
This rarely happens any more.
Unlike most of today's movies, "2001" gives no direct answers. In fact, that's by design. Kubrick said in many interviews that he wasn't interested in presenting things clearly, but rather in such a vague way that it prompted people to question what it meant and come to their own conclusions. Some artists, particularly abstract, feel the same way about their art. Their response to "What does this piece mean?" is, "Whatever you think it does."
However, there was a sequel movie called "2010: The Year We Make Contact", based on an Arthur C. Clarke novel, that answers several of the questions about what happened in the original film and why. While not as artistic and thought-provoking as "2001", it was widely considered at the time to be a decent movie, and I agree. It does scratch those itches about what happened in the original film and why. Which is more believable since the same author wrote both original novels.
I always kind of thought the Monolith can help Mankind break through his limitations and reach the next stage of existence. You see it with the apes, and with Dave, but Dave has reached a stage you and I can't comprehend so a lot of what he's experiencing is definitely left up to interpretation.
I like the film precisely because it dares to be different and adopts a slower pace, not something maybe you could get away with now when we are accustomed to different rhythms in general (perhaps ambient scenes and the popularity of audiobooks might signal a change in that direction to some degree, different media forms, etc.)
Because it's so open to interpretation, much like you could argue the inherent mystery of the cosmos is open to interpretation, from an emotional standpoint anyway, it lends itself to application and whatever the viewer wishes to bring to it.
I think Kubrick intended the film to be a musical piece in a way and said that music was a huge influence on him as a filmmaker, stating that film is much more akin to music in many ways than it is literature, and I kind of agree, as this film is very much about pure visual storytelling, much like the early silent films.
It depends I suppose on how you define your relationship with film narrative as to how you engage with this film i.e. are you more drawn to dialogue, action, a quick pace, etc, or letting the film flow in a particular way without the need for explanation and kind of observing as you would observe a nature scene.
I just admire the audacity and technical bravado of the filmmaking that Kubrick employed here, and for me the story is one of Dave being reborn as a higher being by travelling on this journey, far beyond any more "primitive" behaviors such as fighting for survival and so forth, which we see played out in more earlier and advanced forms.
These are all separate as narratives but connected just as our species has a through-line of connection throughout history, the monolith perhaps being an embodiment of that to some degree, a representative of a higher power.
The star child could be seen as a representation of a new life form that exists in harmony with the cosmos, kind of an entity with its own sovereignty (note that it floats in space with ease and a sense of being beyond whatever protection we might devise to surround ourselves with) yet with the innocence of a newborn and whatever progression and powers we might want to associate it with.
Kubrick in a way is painting the nature and stillness of space by the slow pace, drawing your attention to every detail and letting your mind fill in the blanks. Stillness is the rhythm of nature, very often, thinking about mindfulness, punctuated by sudden events. and I think this film paints in these textures very well.
Some other sci-fi films to check out in a similar, more cerebral vein are both versions of "Solaris" which is a much more meditative, in some ways philosophical exploration of alien life and how it could affect our interaction with the unknown and with each other, "The Day The Earth Stood Still", and "Forbidden Planet". I believe "Beyond the Black Rainbow" and "Enter the Void" are films with somewhat similar vibes to this one in terms of their surreal natures and so forth.
I'm sure there are many others as well but just a few that came to me off the top of my head. Great reaction!
This film influenced everything after it, sci-fi, and otherwise. Kubrick is a marriage between the visual and the sound. You can't talk through Kubrick!
My favorite part is when Dave (when he finds a way back into the ship by blasting himself into the emergency air lock) shows that human ingenuity is still above AI. AI is nothing without human ingenuity....after all, AI is OUR creation.