Slashdot Mirror
New for 2013: An In-Depth Analysis of Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey
An anonymous reader writes "Long time /. member maynard has written one of the most obsessively detailed and extensive analyses of Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey seen in some time. At more than 22,000 words, it contains still images, film clips, musical score selections and copious references, including by Piers Bizony, author of Filming the Future, Nietzsche, Foucault, Freud, and film theorists like Bazin, Kracauer and Zizek. It's already gained some notoriety, having been retweeted by Nicholas Jackson, former editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Slate. Anyone who loves the film or SF in general should find this an amazing read!" I don't know whether it can topple my all-time favorite analysis of 2001, Leonard F. Wheat's Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory .
Uhhh. Hi folks!
I'm in Aussieland, where everything that moves is poisonous, and it's past 11pm. If there are any questions, I'll try to answer as timely as I can. But the wifey has dibs too.
Pretty fracking cool /. and thanks timothy! And it's aright if you think there's better words out there on the film. Damn thing has embossed more ink on paper than just about any flick in existence. I just couldn't help myself 'cause I love the movie. So I wanted my say too.
Whoa.
Wow. Not much to offer beyond the special effects?
I first watched this in 2008 at age 29. My mind was blown by this movie. While the special effects still hold their own today, one cannot say that they "stand out" any more. Your own example "Avatar" demonstrates this.
What this movie offered for me was a fantasy where I could explore in my own mind the origin of life, of us, of what being human means. What it means to create, to learn, to destroy, and to choose. How important the concept of choice is. How vastly and incomprehensibly insignificant we are. And what's next for us? Truly?
Sure, one can think of these things without a movie, but the movie provides a context for exploration; an anchor point for threads of thought to cling to and grow. It is abstract. Aside from some specific themes related to the deceit and struggle between Dave and HAL, whatever meaning you derive comes from you. If all you got from it was a pretty show, I think you missed out.
(I haven't read the book, but I've read it solidifies some of these concepts - if you insist on having the author's meaning rather than your own.)
On the other hand, Star Wars and Avatar are very direct. The themes of good vs evil, religion, militarisation, and in Avatar's case environmentalism are rammed down your throat. There's no gray area. No exploration. No room for interpretation beyond the obvious ("'The light side / dark side is like God / Satan!" - stunning revelation.). You either buy into the narrative or you don't.
Entertaining as these movies are, they are no 2001; the comparison is absurd, really.
I may be biased though. I'm not sure what it was, but I believe I had what might be called a 'religious experience' after watching 2001 the first time. (I wasn't under the influence of anything). For the next few days or a week or so, I dunno, I was profoundly calm. I viewed everything in a very detached manner. Nothing bothered me at work. Noise, people, everything was just in the background, like all of that just wasn't very important anymore. I felt no pressure or stress. I felt very strange. I don't know how else to describe it. It was like the protagonist in Office Space. The movie really resonated with me, I guess.
I'm sorry but I have to agree with Confused Matthew that 2001 sucks balls. You look at Kubrick's entire body of work there is ONE that stands out like a sore thumb as being completely unlike the rest, like the old Sesame Street "one of these things is not like the others" and that is 2001.
With all his other works you had story, characters, plot, or sure it may be a dark or twisted story but its there, if you cut out all the "crap floating in space to music" where there is NOTHING happening but a ship going from one place to another place with little to no dialog? You'd lose a good 70%+ of the movie. I truly believe he became so enamored of the effects, which to be fair had NEVER been attempted anywhere close to that level of realism before, that he simply put everything else on the backburner and never came back to it. And the man was never a good writer to begin with, watch the afterword at the bottom of the link I posted for a piece of an interview with Steven Spielberg after Kubrick's death, where he can list point after point in favor of Kubrick as a director but when it comes to his writing his details on his praise all end and he comes up with an excuse instead.
So I'm sorry Kubrickians but there is a REASON why nobody else has made a film in the vein of 2001, because anybody else would have been called to the carpet for making a movie with no plot, narrative, story, frankly if it wasn't for the (sadly too damned short) parts with HAL there really wouldn't be any real characters at all, just bland empty vessels. It reminds me of how nobody but Terrence Malick can make a Terrence Malick movie because only Terrence Malick gets a free pass from the critics to be as pretentious as he possibly can without getting called to the carpet.
Just look at the opening of Matthew's 2010 review where he simply reads POSITIVE reviews of 2001 and shows how they are almost word for word identical to NEGATIVE reviews of other movies, Kubrick was one of the handful of artists that were/are "critic proof" but with 2001 you have something a little dark and ugly because many of those critics use it like the emperor's clothes, such as what Terry Gilliam does here, basically making it sound like those that don't love and watch 2001 from end to end (honestly I haven't met anybody who doesn't fast forward through the draggiest parts to get to HAL) are basically rabble who just "don't get it".
So I really don't get how a director becomes "critic proof" but I think that is the case with 2001, what would be considered a negative in any other film, dragging scenes, no real narrative, bland characters, scenes continuing well past any need for them to, is somehow a positive when it comes to 2001. No film before or since that I know of has been given such a huge get out of jail free card and the fact that it is so beloved to this day really baffles the hell out of me.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Read through the review. Not impressed. It has the requisite references to Nietzsche and Focault found in too many pretentious philosophy papers. There's obsession over the movie's presentation of zero-g and rotating space station issues, as if those had great philosophical import. In reality, they're severely practical - 2001 was the first movie with the budget to show space realistically. (And one of the last to try.)
There's a long analysis of Hal 9000's motivations, with much emphasis on Hal's growing "self awareness". This misses one of the big points of the movie - Hal had been ordered to make the mission succeed, and that goal had a higher priority than keeping the crew alive. To academics today, that's an alien concept. It wasn't alien in the 1960s, when there were still many WWII veterans around. See "Twelve O-Clock High" for a clear expression of the "mission comes first" mentality. Or "633 Squadron", which is even clearer about the need to send men to their death just to advance the tactical position slightly. Or, if you're in a hurry, read "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner", which is a five-line poem. Those were understood concepts for those who lived and fought through the first half of the twentieth century.
The paper has yet another attempt to explain the ending. Clarke himself once did, and that's probably the only explanation worth reading. Realistically, the ending looks like a writer getting stuck. Some writers and directors have a real problem with endings. Woody Allen was famous for that. Good writers try to avoid pat endings, but alternatives may just lose the audience. That's 2001.
Anyway, that long review is much less profound than it would like to think it is.
That word doesn't mean what you appear to think it does.
I pity your students. They'd have better spent their time on feminist basket weaving or cetacean poetry.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."