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Stanley Kubrick Explains The '2001: A Space Odyssey' Ending In A Rare, Unearthed Video (esquire.com)
When it was originally released in 1968, audiences didn't really know what to make of "2001: A Space Odyssey". In fact, 250 critics walked out of the New York premiere, literally asking aloud, "What is this bullshit?"
[...] Stanley Kubrick himself was always hesitant to offer an explanation of the ending, once telling Playboy, "You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film -- and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level -- but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point." But, in a bizarre video, which appeared recently, the director seems to provide a very simple and clear explanation of the "2001: A Space Odyssey" ending. Esquire: It comes from a Japanese paranormal documentary from TV personality Jun'ichi Yaio made during the filming of The Shining. The documentary was never released, but footage was sold on eBay in 2016 and conveniently appeared online this week timed with the movie's 50th anniversary. Kubrick says in the interview: I've tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they're dramatized one feels it, but I'll try. The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.
They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn't quite sure. Just as we're not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what we think is their natural environment. Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.
[...] Stanley Kubrick himself was always hesitant to offer an explanation of the ending, once telling Playboy, "You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film -- and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level -- but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point." But, in a bizarre video, which appeared recently, the director seems to provide a very simple and clear explanation of the "2001: A Space Odyssey" ending. Esquire: It comes from a Japanese paranormal documentary from TV personality Jun'ichi Yaio made during the filming of The Shining. The documentary was never released, but footage was sold on eBay in 2016 and conveniently appeared online this week timed with the movie's 50th anniversary. Kubrick says in the interview: I've tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they're dramatized one feels it, but I'll try. The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.
They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn't quite sure. Just as we're not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what we think is their natural environment. Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.
I've tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they're dramatized one feels it ...
Yep. He should have tried just a bit harder. This adds nothing to a great film.
Anyone who wanted to know more could have just read the damn book.
Not saying it's "correct," but I liked this interpretation of the monolith:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
TL:DW - It's the movie screen. When it's shown on the lunar surface, it looks like it's in the middle of a movie set. When Dave encounters it in space near the end, it's horizontal, and when it tilts backwards the camera mimics it.
Geez.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I've slightly misinterpreted the sequence, but was happy to go with the flow; the point about him ending up as a some sort of super being was obvious; the fact that the French style environment was right was something that I hadn't picked up. I pleased to have got the extra data, but I was happy with where I was in interpreting it; I'd got enough to cope.
I guess the problem was this was seriously groundbreaking, so Kubrick was speaking a totally new language. I first saw it 10 years after its release, so it was probably less challenging by then.
It seems to me that Interstellar has a number of similarities with 2001. TARS could quite easily be seen as the Monolith in active form, and the ending of Interstellar was very much these "god-like beings" trying to operate within the confines of a human frame of reference.
The bit Interstellar seems to add is that the beings are us, evolved from the future. I seem to recall that being explicit in the film but haven't seen in a while so could be misremembering. That's definitely the impression I got though. I always thought about 2001's ending in the manner Kubrick described, in part because I read the book but mostly because I thought it seemed clear the direction it was guided in - am surprised it was considered an unknown and matter for debate.
Who cares? It's an awful movie once you strip away the special effects.
Literally no plot, huge long, boring scenes. It's awful.
If you were to remove the soundtrack as well, you'd see how damn boring some of those space-scenes are.
The ending was always quite obvious in intent, but terrible in execution.
Found the Star Wars fan.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Or it might be metaphorical or even just surreal. I'm a massive fan of the 1967 series, The Prisoner. Some episodes are relatively straight forward. Others...well, if you can definitively tell me what the ending episode was about, line for line, then congratulations. It was an exercise in the surreal, but with definite themes within it. So too was 2001.
Yes - if you were to take away the elements of the movie that helped realise its vision then it would be a worse movie. See also: tautology.
As compared to most movies today where if you remove the special effects all you have is a soundtrack and some guy going AHHHHHHHHHHH for an hour and a half plus a sex scene (two people going AHHHHHHHH for 5 minutes)?
I think the underrated "2010: The year we make contact" pretty much wraps up the 2001 story and explains everything while being a decent sci-fi movie on its own right. Definitely a recommended watch after 2001. Sure, not groundbreaking, but also no sequences that test the audience nerves/patience like in 2001 (referring of course to the start ape sequence and the approaching the monolith psychedelia).
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I don't get high often, but when I do I get high, I watch 2001 Space Odyssey.
if you can definitively tell me what the ending episode was about, line for line, then congratulations.
Beancounter: Sorry, you're show's been canceled. You're overbudget after renting out that stupid island -- airdrop shipping is expensive! So wrap it up.
McGoohan: WHAT? You told me 26 episodes! You promised!
Beancounter: Oops. Life isn't pretty. Oh yeah, you've only got the props and cameras for two more days, the people for four.
McGoohan: How on Earth am I supposed to finish up over 10 episodes of action in only two days?
Beancounter: Not my problem. Oh, and I need to take that chair you're sitting on. There's still a bench over there -- for now. Don't expect it there after lunch. See you, wouldn't want to be you!
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Kubruck: This ending in the book, I just dunno... Clarke seems to think it's OK, but I'm just not happy with it. I don't have any better ideas, though. I guess I better use it, but I can deck it out with a bunch of psychedelic BS and make it look all trippy and mysterious. Yeah, that's the trick.
But I read the book. (In fact, I had gotten both the English original and a Dutch translation from the local library when I was a teenager. Started with mostly the translation, ended with mostly the original.) This description seems to match my impression from back when. Curious, a movie that actually matches the book reasonably well.
But anyway, what is it with Americans and needing things explained to them? Eg. The Devil's Advocate could do without the flames and feathers at the end. If it wasn't obvious by then, you been asleep with your eyes open, mate?
That is....damned accurate.
It's not such a mystery, humans evolving to their next form, Homo Superior.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Well, it's on the internet now, so no longer rare, right?
Like "Brazil"? I've got a Criterion copy of the the film Brazil, which includes the directors cut, the mainstream theatrical release and the USA release, which is 45 minutes (or 49, I forget which) shorter, since they cut out all the sad or thought provoking bits...
I also own 2001, which I really should get around to watching one day... Oops!
By Arthur C Clarke. Except a lot more detail on the transformation, why and relationship to monolith.
Why is this a new revelation? Kubrick and Clarke worked closely together on 2001 resulting in arguable best film/book combo ever.
Slashdot clearly needs to use the "hosts file engine" to prevent him from spamming all over the place. After all, it gets 99% of threats!
McGoohan only wanted to make 13 episodes. The studio got him to make another 4, and you can definitely tell which ones were added.
And you missed the perfect opportunity for a "Be seeing you" reference.
If you have to explain it because MILLIONS of people for decades have no idea what it was about, you did a shitty job of telling story.
Here's the solution: Read the novel that was released concurrently with the movie. A two hour film will focus mainly on visuals and storytelling, and can't go into too much detail about "meaning". You need to read the book for that.
It is not so difficult. At the beginning of the movie, monkeys interact with the monolith and become "humans". So they become something that they could not comprehend. At the end of the movie, it is the same for Dave. He becomes something the we (as humans) cannot comprehend.
The "human zoo" may make sense for the aliens that built the monolith. However, I do not think that Dave, after this process, becomes "Superman". Superman character is concerned about humanity destiny. Dave becomes something that could be not interested at all in us.
The movie was not taken from the book. The book was published after the movie. Clarke wrote the screenplay and novel essentially at the same time.
I once spoke with an artists about some modern painting he made. I asked him what it was. He told me that it did not matter what he thought it was. What was important was what _I_ thought it was.
I hear the same with songwriters. Even if the words are pretty clear, the meaning it can have for each person will be different. I could be the song you fist heard with the love of your life. Or reminds you of a great time with friends.
As movies are art, this goes for many movies as well. If I see or feel anything the makers of the movies did not intend, does not make my feelings and ideas about the movie false, just different.
I am sure Kubrick thought along those lines and that is why he (almost) never spoke what the meaning was. Here he just explains what it was meaning to him. So if you do not agree with him, that is ok. It would have made him happy. Otherwise he would have give the answer many, many, many times before.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That is clear, but is he talking about 2001 or any of the Star Wars movies?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I have ended?
For reference - I hate the Star Wars movies too. All of them. Did when I was a kid, still do. Zippy-zappy effects and unbelievably atrocious dialogue, but at least people talked in it!
2001 is all long-brooding scenes and special effects. Which, whether now or 40 years ago, does not make a movie.
There is no dialogue AT ALL in the first 25 minutes of the movie, or the last 23! 88 minutes of the movie are entirely dialogue-free.
What plot there is is confusing, incomplete, poorly communicated, and not very useful to any other part of the movie. "We found some stones, we go to this place, don't tell anyone", is the plot right the way through until the (stupid) ending.
Well except for the part where Saturn became Jupiter... (ie a major mismatch between the book and movie)...
Millions of *Americans*.
It's like listening to a 6 year old constantly asking "Why did he do that ?...why did the car blow up?...why is the man running away?...where are the ninjas?"..
Fuck....... American movies are supposed to be light entertainment....full of bright shiny things......leave the thinking to the people who have the capacity.
And now....Kardashians !!
Even the soundtrack was people going "AAAAAAHHHHHHHH".
And you missed the perfect opportunity for a "Be seeing you" reference.
Clearly he's unmutual.
I guess the problem was this was seriously groundbreaking, so Kubrick was speaking a totally new language.
That's one possibility. However, I tend to get rather sceptical about these "Emperor's new clothes"-type of arguments that if you don't understand it you are just stupid. My personal interpretation was a lot more pragmatic: they had no clue how to really end the film so they strung together some ambiguous BS and used the old "it's your interpretation that matters, not mine" cop-out to escape having to explain it. I guess that's why I'm a scientist and not an artist.
Real life often makes the poorest of stories. That's why we have writers and directors, to let the audience enjoy the good stuff.
Trying to imagine a "Voyage to Mars" movie that runs for 3.5 years, most of it just people eating and jogging on treadmills.
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Same for The Shining and the Adler typewriter?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So, you think that any movie you've seen but haven't understood is the fault of the director? Nice fantasy you've constructed for yourself...
Kubrick's explanation wasn't necessary because the book had already presented the ending with a thorough treatment and a complete explanation.
It does not appear that the author of this article actually read the book.
Kriston
I first saw 2001 on DVD, and even fast forwarding through the psychedelic color tunnel at the end was boring with how long it took. If so many people are asking what the end of your movie means, it means you did a bad job portraying your vision. Acting smug about it doesn't help.
Real Life is often better than movies. I've been amazed at how many times a day I mutter, "I couldn't make this shit up, and nobody would believe me if I did".
It is all about how you look at things.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I always thought that movie had six different explanations, hence the name "Kubrick's Cube".
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Great pull. "The Prisoner" was definitely in a different head space than the other spy movies, TV shows, and books of the time. It was more psychedelic than hard boiled and gritty.
I'm going to have to pull out the boxed set again and give it a watch.
The top 5 thought-provoking films to watch are, in no particular order:
- Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
- Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
- Howard the Duck (1986)
- Battlefield Earth (2000)
- Jack and Jill (2011)
After watching those five movies, if will provoke you into never thinking about such lists on the Internet ever again.
#DeleteFacebook
...about asking for such lists...
Stupid slashdot and its lack of editing function.
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Well except for the part where Saturn became Jupiter... (ie a major mismatch between the book and movie)...
Actually, the screenplay matched the book, but the special effects at the time couldn't get the rings of Saturn to look realistic, so they changed the plot to Jupiter at the last minute. By that time, the book had already gone to pre-print, so couldn't be fixed.
Except track #5, which is people going "OOOOOOOHHHHHH!"
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I'm going to get flamed but I didn't like the movie too much.
Or rather it was filled with "space", both literally and figuratively.
I know some people like just watching a guy jog around a circular station for 10 minutes but I find it annoying.
That seems to be true for all Kubric's movies in my opinion.
They are overlong and underplot.
Do artists in general think that there is only one idea and I have to be psychic to get what they are thinking or I can make up my own mind?
How does Kubric deal with that conundrum?
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
I certainly wouldn't call Howard the Duck "thought-provoking", but it was a fun movie.
Plan 9 From Outer Space and Manos are very thought-provoking. You'll be spending the entire movie, and several hours afterward, thinking, "What the fuck was that?"
They're not so much corrupt as they are producing trite garbage to make a dollar. It's made to sell tickets, not appeal to your higher brain.
You seriously need to watch a film without Jeff Goldblum in it.
Full disclosure: I firmly believe Jeff Goldblum is a treasure and should be in every film, though.
/sarcasm Because under the definition of movie it includes must have dialogue ... oh wait, It does not!
I can only imagine your whining if you watch one of best movies of all time: Baraka (on BluRay):
No plot, no dialogue, no character development yet still one of the best commentaries on the human condition.
Funnily enough, both things can be true. I agree, I've experienced weird, hilarious, and heartbreaking things that were all too improbable or too convoluted to put in a story and have anyone enjoy them. That definitely happens.
But the person I'd responded to suggested that since "real" space is slow and boring, it's appropriate to be slow and boring trying to tell a story about it, and for the most part that's not true. (Though plenty of people seem to have liked 2001, so obviously there's some market for it.)
Main point being, as a justification, "it's like real life" doesn't make a good excuse for a bad story, the only exception maybe being a memoir, where adherence to the truth probably trumps the narrative flow. Even there you'd better have *some* good stuff, or there's no point in writing the memoir, either.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Clearly it was over your head, you haven't the capacity to comprehend it. Content yourself with your Michael Bay films, I think that's more your level.
I managed to get this more-or-less as described when I first saw it in a movie house when I was 10, in fact, it seemed fairly obvious. The sequence that didn't make much sense o ring true was the "wormhole" sequence - you could more-or-less figure out what was supposed to be happening (being transported across the galaxy) but it's looked completely unnatural. It was probably due to technical limitations, but "Contact" did it much better. And it was clearly the product of the era - the era of hippies and LSD. Hallucinations do not make for good story-telling. But the hotel sequence and the "space baby" concept was, I thought, pretty straightforward.
That aside, the rest of the movie was a tour de force technically, and was a decent story, told reasonably well, with OK acting for the most part. Part of the spin on it was that the astronauts and people around the space program (at the time) tended to be, or appear, to be dull as dishwater, which seems to have led all the actors to underplaying their roles. In fact, having met several of the eras astronauts, I can easily guess who was the model for Dave Bowman. The real astronauts were really interesting people, they were whitewashed by PR and Life magazine to be about as interesting, as a group, as insurance adjusters. Michael Collins book tells the real, and far more interesting and compelling, story - which is more-or-less exactly what you would expect from a bunch of military fighter jocks tossed into that sort of scrutiny,
It all seemed perfectly clear to me what was happening and nothing I just read in TFA was any sort of revelation to me. Do people really have a hard time understanding what was going on there?
Of course, what he says is almost identical to what I was thinking when I walked out after having seen it when it was released in '69: "he's become the starchild, and he's looking at the Earth, and thinking that he didn't yet know what, but he was going to do something with it."
Of course, I'd been seriously reading sf for about 8 or 9 years at the time, so it was obvious what he was saying.
The reviewers said exactly what I expected of them, because they didn't have a f*ckin' clue, and wouldn't ever be seen actually, y'know, reading *genre fiction* like sf....
I thought for a second that Kubrick was back from the dead, maybe helped by Jon Snow's Melissandre
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Only for simpletons that need things spelled out for them.
"You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film -- and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level -- but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point."
The explanation he gives is pretty much the understanding I had of the ending, with the exception that he was being sent back to earth as a super-being. Maybe it seemed straightforward to me because it is the simple explanation, and I was about 10yo when I first saw it in the theaters.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Now do the Sopranos, please.
The problem is that 2001 is not a plot- or character-driven movie. It's a theme-driven movie.
The scene at the beginning establishes the context for where humanity is in 2001 - basically still apes hitting each other with sticks. We just built bigger sticks - that's what the transition shot from the bone in the air to the orbiting nuke is about.
I just bought 2010 for $5. Maybe I paid too much? LOL.
The ending was obvious, and leaving it open to speculation made it art. People need to learn to use their brains. Not everything has a pat answer that someone else has come up with. Sometimes you have to come up with your own answers.
Except track #5, which is people going "OOOOOOOHHHHHH!"
So the movie was about people watching fireworks?
Howard the Duck and Battlefield Earth have you spending the entire movie, and several hours afterward, thinking, "Why the fuck was that made?"
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I haven't seen Battlefield Earth, but Howard the Duck has an easy answer: it was a combination of "Because" and "Puff, puff, pass".
I'd also say that story elements that Clarke talks about in the book "Lost Worlds of 2001" would make fine additions to a movie remake.
Mod parent up. I'd love to see some of those elements used in something released too...
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
To me, the literal plot of 2001 was always a bit of a sideshow to the greater metaphorical messaging. The overall arc of the story is of the journey of mankind from a primitive animal to a fully-realized being. It's helpful to know that the title track is Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (which is a musical setting for the book by Nietzche) and that the child is the last stage of the "Three Metamorphoses" discussed by the title character of the book (the first two are the camel and the lion). Kubrick was well-versed in philosophy and most certainly did not choose the soundtrack and final scene by accident.
In the book, the "camel" is defined by the external burdens it takes on and the fealty to "thou shalt". In these sense, it is very much like a primitive man who was all-consumed with the demands of survival and was unable to create beyond his immediate survival. Finding the first monolith marked the transition from the camel to the lion. The "lion" is able to create for his own, but is still defined in opposition to his burdens. The events in 2001 correspond to humanity in this stage- they can travel to other planets, but are still prisoner to the vast distances and challenges of outer space. The child is freed from all burdens and can truly create anew. The finding of the second monolith marks the transition to the child, which is the state humanity seeks as it ventures away from the planet.
I think the murkiness of the third transition is fully appropriate because it is a vision of the distant future. By the 1960s, the path from primitive human to space-venturer was already clear. But our transition past that remains only a vision. The scene faux-French room I took as a waiting room representing where we were in the 20th century prior to the upcoming metamorphosis and the discombobulation representative of the immense pace of technological and societal change.
As a side note, I never really considered 2010 as a true sequel because it abandoned all philosophical pretense with the departure of Kubrick from the project.
If it was for 5 year olds yes. However, cinema, books and theater are intended to make you think and reflect. Unfortunately, modern cinema often produces films with just one story. No deeper meaning. No reflection on the human condition. No adventure.
Plan 9 was ok, but Manos was awesome in its ineptitude.
Howard the Duck was mostly just a film about bestiality. It would have worked better with Ron Perlman as the the duck.
He forgot the bit about asking for the ears back.
I actually heard someone say "Brazil" was a comedic film. What? It was anything but!
It's satirical, which is a form of humour.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Good. Saturn is pretty, but the red storm gives Jupiter that extra bit of intrigue!
"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." Mark Twain
My god, it's full of spam!
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First again, like our incredible President Trump. See you again in two years, sir.
About as factually accurate as most of what Trump says.
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When people are still trying to figure out what your decades old movie was about.. it might some be bad writing/directing.
People are still trying to figure out the bible so there you go.
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Dave: "Open the pod bay doors, Hal."
Hal: "Dave? Dave's not here."
If you don't know why Battlefield Earth was made, and you aren't averse to reading about Scientology, you might enjoy reading up on L. Ron Hubbard and his quest for... sci-fi religious superiority?
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
One point often missed is that the book was published *after* the movie. Whatever else, the surprise ending made everyone want to read the book! Clarke made a number of comments in letters to me about 2001 & 2010 - I will now have to dig them out and re-read them :-)
On the contrary, it means the purpose of the movie was achieved by making people think and reach their own conclusions. If you want a movie to don't think at all go watch Titanic =)
There's no more directors like him. Movie industry it's in a all time low regarding quality or, at least, different and breaking movies like this one.
Since I actually read the book, I know what happened. I'm sure the director read the book, so what he thought happened is also no mystery.
I miss staying up late at night debating and arguing with others about what does it all mean.
mfwright@batnet.com
I think when I saw it the world had changed, and it was far closer to morphing from satire to reality.