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2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
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2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with thematic elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life, and is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering special effects, ambiguous and often surreal imagery, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of dialogue.
Despite receiving mixed reviews upon release, 2001: A Space Odyssey is today recognized by many critics and audiences as one of the greatest films ever made; the 2002 Sight & Sound poll of critics ranked it among the top ten films of all time.
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Encyclopedia
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with thematic elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life, and is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering special effects, ambiguous and often surreal imagery, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of dialogue.
Despite receiving mixed reviews upon release, 2001: A Space Odyssey is today recognized by many critics and audiences as one of the greatest films ever made; the 2002 Sight & Sound poll of critics ranked it among the top ten films of all time. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, and received one for visual effects. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.
Style
Clarke and Kubrick wrote the novel and screenplay simultaneously, but while Clarke ultimately opted for clearer explanations of the mysterious monolith and the StarGate, Kubrick chose to keep the film mysterious and enigmatic with a minimum of dialogue in order to convey what many viewers have described as a powerful sense of the sublime and numinous, without specific explanations of events. For this reason, an encyclopedic plot summary of this film is difficult.
Plot summary
The title sequence begins with an image of the Earth rising over the Moon, while the Sun rises over the Earth, all in alignment. (This is the first of three occurrences in the film of the iconic "Thus Spake Zarathustra" theme. See Music for further discussion of the use of music in the film.)
The Dawn of Man
Over images of an African desert, a caption reads "The Dawn of Man." A tribe of herbivore apes is foraging for food. One of them is attacked and killed by a leopard. They are driven from their water hole by another tribe. Defeated, they sleep overnight in a small exposed rock crater. Waking at sunrise, they find that a mysterious black, rectangular monolith has appeared in front of their shelter. They approach the monolith shrieking and jumping. Subsequently, one of the apes, played by Daniel Richter, realizes how to use a bone as both tool and a weapon while having mental flashbacks to the monolith, indicating that the monolith has either "taught" or inspired him to this knowledge. The apes are now able to kill animals and eat meat. Next morning they wrest control of the water hole away from the other tribe, killing their leader in the process. Exultant in victory, the ape leader throws his bone into the air which switches via match cut to a shot of an orbital satellite millions of years in the future, circa 2000. This satellite and three more immediately following it are generally identified as orbiting nuclear weapons.
TMA-1
There is no title caption introducing this section.
The camera pans from the nuclear satellites to a Pan American space plane which takes Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) to an orbital rendezvous with Space Station 5 in an elaborate space flight and docking sequence. (See Music) Upon disembarking, Floyd is greeted by an old colleague with whom he chats before making a videophone call to his daughter, played by Vivian Kubrick, to wish her a happy birthday, expressing regrets he cannot come to her party. Strolling down the main corridor, he comes upon a group of Soviet scientists and mentions that he is on his way to Clavius Base, a U.S. base on the moon. The Russians query him anxiously about the “great big mystery” of what has been going on there, questions that Floyd initially shrugs off. Floyd refuses to discuss the subject further when they press him about the rumor that a serious epidemic has broken out in the base.
Floyd travels to Clavius base in a moon shuttle. There he heads a debriefing session, beginning by apologizing for the epidemic cover story, mentioning he had been personally embarrassed by it. The actual purpose of Floyd’s mission is to investigate an artifact dug up on the moon, initially detected by its anomalous magnetic signal and subsequently named "TMA-1," for "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One." Geological evidence shows it was deliberately buried four million years ago. Floyd and his men ride in a Moonbus to the archeological site in a journey illuminated by earthlight, chatting idly. In a large rectangular pit dug around it, the artifact is revealed to be another monolith similar to the one encountered by the apes millions of years ago. Floyd’s staff examine the monolith and pose for a photo with it. As they do, the sun rises over the top of the monolith, which then emits an ear-piercing high-pitched radio signal.
Jupiter Mission
A title caption reads "Jupiter Mission: Eighteen Months Later." On board the spaceship Discovery One, bound for Jupiter, are two mission pilots, astronauts Dr. David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Francis Poole (Gary Lockwood), and three scientists "sleeping" in cryogenic hibernation. Bowman and Poole watch a BBC television story about the mission, in which the TV audience is introduced to the ship’s on-board computer HAL 9000, addressed as "Hal" and voiced by Douglas Rain, who has human-like intelligence and runs most of the ship’s operations. The BBC announcer notes that Hal seems supremely self-confident, as if he has emotions. This is followed by another broadcast of a birthday message from Frank’s parents during which Frank Poole seems indifferent.
Later, while Dave is showing Hal some sketches of the hibernating astronauts, Hal asks Dave some pointed questions about suspicions he has about the air of mystery and secrecy surrounding the mission. Hal then interrupts himself to state that the AE-35 unit, which controls the antenna that provides communications with Earth, is going to fail in 72 hours. Dave takes an excursion outside of the ship in an EVA pod, the hatches of which are rigged with explosive bolts, to replace the unit with a spare. After returning to the ship, Frank and Dave examine the unit Hal claimed was defective, but they are unable to find anything wrong with it. They contact Earth-based ground control, who tell them that their own HAL computer states that their on-board HAL 9000 computer is in error predicting the fault. This is striking--and shocking, since the 9000 series has a perfect operating record.
The astronauts query Hal as to what he thinks has happened, and Hal insists it can only be due to "human error." He suggests placing the unit back in the antenna and waiting for it to fail to see what the problem is. After coming up with a pretext, Dave and Frank go into one of the EVA pods to talk without Hal overhearing them. Frank says he has “a bad feeling about him.” They decide to follow Hal's suggestion and replace the unit, feeling that this does suggest Hal is self-confidently sure of his prediction. Frank makes the suggestion that if Hal is proven to be malfunctioning, Hal will have to be deactivated. Unbeknownst to them, Hal is reading their lips through the window of the spacepod.
As Frank attempts to replace the AE-35, his spacepod, controlled by Hal, turns and accelerates towards him, severing his oxygen hose and setting him adrift. Dave then goes on a rescue mission in another EVA pod, but without the helmet or gloves of his spacesuit, to recover Frank. While Dave is out of the spaceship, the life functions of all the crew in suspended animation are terminated while a screen flashes "Computer Malfunction." When Dave returns to the exterior of the ship, he asks Hal to open the pod bay doors to let him inside. But Hal refuses to do so, stating that Dave’s plan to disconnect him puts the mission in jeopardy. Risking decompression sickness from explosive decompression, Dave enters the ship through the emergency air lock, aligning the EVA pod with it and detonating the explosive bolts of its hatch to do so. Securing his spacesuit with the helmet, life-support pack, and gloves from the EVA suit in the airlock, Bowman makes his way to HAL's LOGIC MEMORY CENTER in order to disconnect Hal. Hal tries to protest and reassure Dave that everything will be all right although he has “made some very poor decisions recently,” but Dave ignores him.
As Dave slowly disconnects one module after another from Hal’s circuitry, Hal continues to protest. Eventually he ends up repeating, “My mind is going. I can feel it.” Then he repeats, “I'm afraid.” Hal then goes into a monologue about his first day of operation, regressing to his earliest days. During this he offers to sing the song ("Daisy Bell") his instructor taught on his first operational day. Dr. Bowman replies he would like Hal to sing the song. As Hal sings, his voice continuously slows down. When Hal is disconnected, a television monitor is activated showing a pre-recorded briefing that was supposed to be played only when they reached Jupiter's space and the entire crew had been revived. It is the last piece of dialogue in the film.
Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite
A caption reads "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” Dave leaves the Jupiter ship in an EVA pod, and encounters another monolith in orbit around Jupiter. While approaching it, he finds himself suddenly traveling through a tunnel of colored light (generally known as the “Star Gate”) racing at great speed across vast distances of space viewing many strange astronomical phenomena, concluding with earthlike landscapes with altered colors. He eventually finds himself in a bedroom containing Louis XVI-style decor. He repeatedly sees future versions of himself, with the film's POV each time switching to the later Dave. Finally an elderly and dying David Bowman is lying on the bed. At the foot of the bed, another monolith appears. It transforms him into a fetus-like being enclosed in a transparent orb of light, the “Star-Child”. The final scene shows the “Star-Child” floating in Space next to Earth.
Cast
*Keir Dullea as Dr. David Bowman
Production
Writing
Shortly after completing Dr. Strangelove (1964), Stanley Kubrick became fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and determined to make "the proverbial good science fiction movie". Searching for a suitable collaborator in the science fiction community, Kubrick was advised to seek out Arthur C. Clarke by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staffer Roger Caras. Although convinced that Clarke was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree", Kubrick agreed that Caras would cable the Ceylon-based author with the film proposal. Clarke's cabled response stated that he was "frightfully interested in working with enfant terrible", and added "what makes Kubrick think I'm a recluse?"
In early conversations, Kubrick and Clarke jokingly called their project How the Solar System Was Won, an allusion to the 1962 Cinerama epic How the West Was Won. Like that film, Kubrick's production would be divided into distinct episodes. Clarke considered adapting a number of his earlier stories before selecting "The Sentinel", a 'first-contact' story he had published in 1950, as the starting point for the film. The collaborators originally planned to develop a novel first, free of the constraints of a normal script, and then to write the screenplay; they envisaged that the final writing credits would be "Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick", to reflect their pre-eminence in their respective fields. However, in practice the cinematic ideas required for the screenplay developed parallel to the novel, with cross-fertilisation between the two. In the end, the screenplay credits were shared while the novel, released shortly after the film, was attributed to Clarke alone, but Clarke wrote later that "the nearest approximation to the complicated truth" is that the screenplay should be credited to "Kubrick and Clarke" and the novel to "Clarke and Kubrick".
Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in his book The Cosmic Connection that Clarke and Kubrick asked his opinion on how to best depict extraterrestrial intelligence. Sagan, wryly acknowledging Kubrick's desire to use actors to portray humanoid aliens for convenience's sake, argued that alien life forms were unlikely to bear any resemblance to terrestrial life, and that to do so would introduce "at least an element of falseness" to the film. Sagan proposed that the film suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence. He attended the premiere and was "pleased to see that I had been of some help." Sagan related that many Soviet scientists regarded the film to be the best American movie they had seen.
On February 22, 1965, MGM announced it was backing Kubrick's new science fiction film under the title Journey Beyond the Stars. Interviewed by The New Yorker shortly afterwards, Kubrick compared the proposed film to "a space Odyssey", and in April he officially changed the title to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Arthur C. Clarke kept a diary throughout his involvement with 2001, excerpts of which were published in 1972 as The Lost Worlds of 2001. Clarke's diary reveals that by the time backing was secured for Journey Beyond the Stars in early 1965, the writers still had no firm idea of what would happen to Bowman after the Star Gate sequence, though as early as October 17, 1964 Kubrick had come up with what Clarke called a "wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease". Initially all of Discoverys astronauts were to survive the journey; a decision to leave Bowman as the sole survivor and have him regress to infancy was agreed by October 3, 1965. The computer HAL was originally to have been named "Athena", after the Greek goddess of wisdom, with a feminine voice and persona. Clarke noted that, contrary to popular rumor, it was a complete coincidence that each of the letters of HAL's name immediately preceded those of IBM. The meaning of HAL has been given both as "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" and as "Heuristic ALgorithmic computer". The former appears in Clarke's novel of 2001 and the latter in his sequel novel 2010. Non-fiction reference books on computing more frequently use the first. In formal math, an algorithm gives an exact answer, whereas a heuristic gives a well-educated guess.
Filming
Filming of 2001 began December 29, 1965, in Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, England. The studio was chosen because it could house the 60'x 120'x 60' pit for the Tycho crater excavation scene, the first to be shot.
From 1966, filming was at MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, from where the production was run to facilitate special effects filming; it was described as a "huge throbbing nerve center… with much the same frenetic atmosphere as a Cape Kennedy blockhouse during the final stages of Countdown."
The film was planned to be photographed in 3-film-strip Cinerama (like How the West Was Won), but was changed to Super Panavision 70 (which uses a single-strip 65 mm negative) on the advice of special photographic effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, due to distortion problems with the 3-strip system; color processing and 35 mm release prints was done using Technicolor's dye transfer process. The 70 mm prints were made by MGM Laboratories, Inc. or Metrocolor. In March 1968, Kubrick began editing the film, making his final cuts just before the film's general release in April 1968. The budget was $4.5 million over the initial $6.0 million budget, and sixteen months behind schedule.
Special effects
Director of Photography Geoffrey Unsworth did not want the film to be complicated with printing effects such as blue screen, so most of the special effects were done as in-camera effects.
This film pioneered retroreflective matting (front projection) in mainstream movie production. The technique was selected to produce the backdrops for the African scenes where apes learn to use tools, as traditional techniques using backdrops or back-projection did not produce a realistic looking result. Existing techniques that used painted backdrops for stills or back-projection for moving scenes simply proved not to be capable of producing the realistic effects Kubrick demanded. The technique was also used for a number of shots during the spacecraft scenes, notably to produce the images seen through windows. The technique has been used widely in the film industry since 2001 pioneered its use, although starting in the 1990s it has been increasingly replaced by green screen systems.
Front projection uses a separate scenery projector arranged at right angles to the camera. A half-silvered mirror splits the light coming out of the projector, with about half of it reflected forward where it falls onto a retroflective backdrop. The image is then reflected back to the camera, along with the normal lighting from the scene. The projected landscape is invisible on the actors because it is much dimmer than the scene illumination, and is only visible in the camera because of the high reflectivity of the background retroflective screen.
Front projection had been used in smaller settings before 2001, but mostly for still-action photography or television production, using small still images and projectors. The expansive backdrops in the African scenes required a backdrop 40 feet tall, far larger than had ever been used before. Using the largest existing projectors based on 4 by 5 inch transparencies resulted in grainy images when projected that large, so the 2001 team worked with MGM's Special Effects Supervisor, Tom Howard, to build a custom projector using 8 by 10 slides and the largest water-cooled arc lamp available. When the reflective material was applied to the backdrop, they discovered roll-to-roll variations that led to obvious visual artifacts, a problem that was solved by tearing the material into small chunks and applying it in a "camouflage" pattern.
Space travel shots were also handled in-camera. The model of the Discovery One spacecraft was moved along a track, mechanically linked to the camera. On the first pass, the model was unlit, masking the star-field. The model and film were returned to the start position, and on the second pass, the model was lit. For the third pass, motion pictures were projected onto front-projection screens in the model's windows, showing the interior of the ship. The result was a film negative that was as sharp as live footage.
For interior shots inside the spacecraft, which was shown to contain a giant centrifuge whose rotation was intended to produce artificial gravitation, Kubrick had a 30-ton rotating "ferris wheel" built by Vickers-Armstrong Engineering Group at a cost of $750,000. The set was 38 feet in diameter and 10 feet wide. Various spacecraft interior shots, mostly in the Discovery, were shot by placing the set within the wheel, then rotating it while the actor walked in sync with its motion, leaving them at the bottom of the wheel. The camera could be fixed to show the actor walking "up" the set, or mounted to rotate with the actor, as in the famous jogging scene. The number of shots where the actors appear separated in the wheel are limited, because they required one of the actors to be strapped into place while the wheel moved to allow the other to walk at the bottom. The most notable case is just before Dave and Frank eat while watching the BBC special, which required Gary Lockwood to be strapped into a seat while Keir Dullea walked toward him from the opposite side of the wheel.
Veteran technicians of previous science fiction films were puzzled by how realistic the effects of floating in space were when Dave or Frank are outside the Discovery, and the weightless scenes inside the spacecraft such as the scene with the disconnection of Hal. These were accomplished by having actors suspended from a ceiling (as was then common in simulating spacewalking) with the camera underneath them pointing straight up, thus eliminating the common effect of a notable up-down pull on an astronaut. The actors's bodies blocked the camera's view of the suspension wires, creating a very believable appearance of floating.
The colored lights in the Star Gate sequence were accomplished by slit-scan photography of moving images of painting. The shots of various nebula-like phenomena were colored paints in water in a dark room.
An important article by Douglas Trumbull about the creation of special effects for 2001 appears in the June 1968 issue of American Cinematographer
Deleted scenes
Kubrick filmed several scenes that were deleted from the final film. These include a schoolroom on the moon base; Floyd buying a bush baby from a department store, via videophone, for his daughter; additional space walks; and astronaut Bowman retrieving a spare part from an octagonal corridor. The most notable cut was a 10-minute black-and-white opening sequence featuring interviews with actual scientists, including Freeman Dyson, discussing extraterrestrial life, which Kubrick removed after an early screening for MGM executives.
If the music intro and outro are included, 29 minutes of film have been axed from the theatrical version.
Release
The film's world premiere was on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.. Kubrick deleted 19 minutes from the film just before the film's general release on April 6, 1968. It was released in 70mm format, with a six-track stereo magnetic soundtrack, and projected in the 2.21:1 aspect ratio. In autumn 1968, it was generally released in 35mm anamorphic format, with either a four-track magnetic stereo soundtrack or an optical monaural soundtrack.
The original 70 mm release was advertised as Cinerama in cinemas equipped with special projection optics and a deeply curved screen. In standard cinemas, the film was identified as a 70 mm production. The original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70 mm Cinerama with six-track sound (via Klipschorn- and Odyssey-model cinema speakers) played continually for two years in The Glendale Theater, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, a feat cited by Arthur C. Clarke in the non-fiction book The Lost Worlds of 2001.
MGM also published letterbox laserdisc editions (including an updated edition with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound). There also was a special edition laserdisc from The Criterion Collection in the CAV format. In 1999, it was re-released in VHS, and in 2001 as part of the "Stanley Kubrick Collection" in both VHS and DVD formats with remastered sound and picture.
It has been released on Region 1 DVD four times: once by MGM Home Entertainment in 1998 and thrice by Warner Home Video in 1999, 2001, and 2007. The MGM release had a booklet, the film, trailer, and an interview with Arthur C. Clarke, and the soundtrack was remastered in 5.1 surround sound. The 1999 Warner Bros. release omitted the booklet, yet had a re-release trailer. The 2001 release contained the re-release trailer, the film in the original 2.21:1 aspect ratio, digitally re-mastered from the original 70 mm print, and the soundtrack remixed in 5.1 surround sound. A limited edition DVD included a booklet, 70 mm^ frame, and a new soundtrack CD of the film's actual (unreleased) music tracks, and a sampling of HAL's dialogue.
Warner Home Video released a 2-DVD Special Edition on October 23, 2007 as part of their latest set of Kubrick reissues. The DVD was released on its own and as part of a revised Stanley Kubrick box set which contains new Special Edition versions of A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, and the documentary A Life in Pictures. Additionally, the film was released in high definition on both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The Imdb.com listing of this DVD and the official Warner Brothers webpage have a complete listing of all the special features but both omit a documentary entitled "What is Out There?" featuring interviews with Keir Dullea and Arthur C. Clarke.
Reaction
Upon release, 2001 polarized critical opinion, receiving both ecstatic praise and vehemently negative criticism. Some critics viewed the original 160-minute cut shown at premieres in Washington, New York and Los Angeles, while others saw the 19 minutes shorter general release version that was in theaters from April 6, 1968 onwards. In The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt said it was "some kind of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor…The film is hypnotically entertaining, and it is funny without once being gaggy, but it is also rather harrowing."
Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times opined that it was "the picture that science fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them. It is an ultimate statement of the science fiction film, an awesome realization of the spatial future…it is a milestone, a landmark for a spacemark, in the art of film."
Louise Sweeney of The Christian Science Monitor felt that 2001 was "a brilliant intergalactic satire on modern technology. It's also a dazzling 160-minute tour on the Kubrick filmship through the universe out there beyond our earth." Philip French wrote that the film was "perhaps the first multi-million-dollar supercolossal movie since D.W. Griffith's Intolerance fifty years ago which can be regarded as the work of one man…Space Odyssey is important as the high-water mark of science-fiction movie making, or at least of the genre's futuristic branch." The Boston Globe's review indicated that it was "the world's most extraordinary film. Nothing like it has ever been shown in Boston before or, for that matter, anywhere…The film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life."
Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, believing the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale." http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19680412/REVIEWS/804120301/1023
Time provided at least seven different mini-reviews of the film in various issues in 1968, each one slightly more positive than the preceding one; in the final review dated December 27, 1968, the magazine called 2001 "an epic film about the history and future of mankind, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. The special effects are mindblowing."
However, Pauline Kael said it was "a monumentally unimaginative movie,"
and Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic called it "a film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull." Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that it was "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring." Variety's 'Robe' believed the film was a "Big, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic…A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark." Andrew Sarris called it "one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life…2001 is a disaster because it is much too abstract to make its abstract points." (Sarris reversed his opinion upon a second viewing of the film, and declared "2001 is indeed a major work by a major artist.") John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines…and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans...2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story."
2001 earned one Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was nominated for Best Art Direction, Best Director (Kubrick), and Original Screenplay (Kubrick, Clarke).
Awards and honors
Academy Awards
Other awards
Won
- BAFTA Awards:
- Best Art Direction (Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer)
- Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth)
- Best Road Show
- Best Sound Track (Winston Ryder)
- Cinema Writers Circle, Spain:
- Best Foreign Film
- David di Donatello Awards, Italy:
- Best Foreign Production (Stanley Kubrick)
- Hugo Awards:
- Best Dramatic Presentation
- Kansas City Film Critics:
- Best Director (Stanley Kubrick)
- Best Picture
- Laurel Awards:
- Best Road Show
Nominated
- BAFTA Awards:
Best Film (Stanley Kubrick) - UN Award (Stanley Kubrick)
- Directors Guild of America (DGA):
- Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (Stanley Kubrick)
Top film lists
2001 was number 22 on AFI's 100 Years… 100 Movies, was named number 40 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills, included on its 100 Years, 100 Quotes ("Open the pod bay doors, Hal."), HAL 9000 is the #13 villain in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, is the only science fiction film to make the Sight & Sound poll for ten best movies, and tops the Online Film Critics Society list of "greatest science fiction films of all time." In 1991, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry. Other lists that include the film are 50 Films to See Before You Die (#6), The Village Voice 100 Best Films of the 20th Century (#11), the Sight & Sound Top Ten poll (#6), and Roger Ebert's Top Ten (1968) (#2). In 1995, the Vatican named it as one of the 45 best films ever made (and included it in a sub-list of the "Top Ten
Art Movies" of all time.)
American Film Institute recognition
More recently, 2001 was named number one by the American Film Institute on their 10 Top 10 special in the Science Fiction category.
Interpretation
Since its premiere, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been analyzed and interpreted by multitudes of people ranging from professional movie critics to amateur writers and science fiction fans. Kubrick encouraged people to explore their own interpretations of the film, and refused to offer an explanation of "what really happened" in the movie, preferring instead to let audiences embrace their own ideas and theories. In a 1968 interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick stated:
- 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.
Scientific accuracy
The primary technical adviser for 2001: A Space Odyssey was Marshall Spaceflight Center engineer Frederick I. Ordway III.
(Detailed design information is given by Ordway in the American Astronautical Society History Series. .) 2001 is highly realistic when compared with other science fiction films, particularly its predecessors. It accurately presents outer space as transmitting no sound. Its portrayal of microgravitation in spaceships and outer space is notable. Tracking shots inside the rotating wheel providing artificial gravity contrast with the "weightlessness" outside the wheel during the repair and Hal disconnection scenes. (The pod bay walking scenes of the astronauts may be explained by the earlier scenes where stewardesses walk in zero gravity using velcro-equipped shoes labelled Grip Shoes.)
Much was made by MGM's publicity department of the film's realism, claiming in a 1968 brochure that "Everything in 2001: A Space Odyssey can happen within the next three decades, and…most of the picture will happen by the beginning of the next millennium." This has proved to be wrong, although some of the film's predictions (see following) have indeed been realized.
The film is scientifically inaccurate in minor details, many explained by the technical difficulty inherent to producing a realistic effect.
The appearance of outer space is problematical both in terms of lighting and the alignment of astronomical bodies. With no atmosphere in outer space, stars do not twinkle, and light does not spread out to become ambient. The side of the Discovery spacecraft unlit by the sun would be virtually pitch-black. Nor would the stars appear to move in relationship to Discovery as it traveled towards Jupiter. Proportionally, the sun, moon, and earth would not visually line up at the size ratios as shown in the opening shot. Nor would the moons of Jupiter in the shot just before Bowman enters the Star Gate. (In fact, due to the perfect Laplace resonance of the orbits of the 4 large moons of Jupiter, the first three will never align, and the third moon Ganymede will always be exactly 90 degrees further around the planet whenever the two inmost moons are in perfect alignment.) The first two appearances of the monolith, one on the Earth and one on the moon, conclude with the sun rising over the top of the monolith at the zenith of the sky. While this could happen in an African veldt, it is questionable if this could happen anywhere near the crater Tycho (where the monolith is found) as it is 45 degrees south of the lunar equator. Also, seen from space, the edge of the Earth seems sharp in the movie, but actually it should be slightly blurry due to the scattering of the sunlight by the atmosphere, as we can see in many photos taken from space today.
The entire sequence in which Dave Bowman re-enters Discovery through the emergency airlock has problems. Bowman apparently holds his breath just before ejecting from the pod into the airlock. Before exposure to a vacuum, NASA states, one must exhale, because holding in the breath would rupture the lungs. On the DVD edition of the film released in 2007, Arthur C. Clarke states in an interview that had he been on the set the day they filmed this, he would have caught this error. After Bowman ejects from the pod, the pod is shown to remain stationary. However, the air escaping the pod's rear door that propels Bowman into the hatch would have also propelled the pod away from the spaceship. Finally, the blown pod hatch simply vanishes while concealed behind a puff of smoke.
While the film's portrayal of reduced or zero gravity is unusually realistic, problems remain. When spacecraft land on the Moon, dust is incorrectly shown billowing as it would in an atmosphere, not the vacuum of the Lunar surface.While on the moon, all actors move as if in normal Earth gravity, not the 1/6 G of the moon. Similarly, the behavior of Dave and Frank in the pod bay is not fully consistent with zero-Gs, as it should be since the pod bay is not in a centrifuge. The astronauts could be wearing magnetic boots, but their leaning on the table when they try to diagnose the AE-35 unit is especially peculiar. Earlier in the film, while en route to the space station, Dr. Floyd's pen floats out of his pocket, to be retrieved by the stewardess. The pen moves in a circular arc (actually stuck to the edge of a rotating plastic disc), but it would more likely move in a straight line through the cabin. The circular arc would be consistent with the plane rotating, but that might generate some degree of artificial gravity in the environment. It is also generally held that when drinking through a straw in zero gravity, liquid would not sink down after one stopped sucking.
Finally, the unrealistically sharp reflections of the pod monitors on David Bowman's face are due to the simulation of flat-screen monitors by miniature rear-projection screens.
There are other problems that might be more appropriately described as continuity errors, such as which side of Earth is lighted when viewed from Clavius, and the time lag of the position readout on the PanAm plane's monitors.
Imagining the future
The film shows an imagined version of the year 2001.
One futuristic device already in use when the film was released in 1968 was voice-print identification, used in some police departments. A credible prototype of a chess-playing computer already existed, even though it could be defeated by experts. Computers did not defeat champions until the late 1980s. While 10-digit phone numbers for long-distance national dialing originated in 1951, longer phone numbers for international dialing became a reality in 1970. Personal in-flight entertainment displays were first introduced in the 1980s strictly for the purpose of playing video games, but then broadened out for the purpose of TV broadcast and movies as shown in the film. The film also shows flat-screen TV monitors, of which the first real-world prototype appeared in 1975. (However, TV broadcasts do not have more height than width.) Plane cockpit integrated system displays, known as glass cockpits, were introduced in 1979. Even rudimentary voice-controlled computing now exists, although it is still not as sophisticated as depicted in the film.
In terms of corporate realities, many more BBC stations exist now than did in 1968 as shown in the film (although there is not yet a BBC 12), and the corporations IBM, Aeroflot, Howard Johnsons, and Hilton Hotels, all of which appear in the film, still exist. On the other hand, the film depicts a still existing Pan Am and still autonomous Bell System telephone company. Pan Am declared bankruptcy in 1991. The Bell System logo seen in the film was modified in 1969 and dropped entirely in 1983. Political realities are also quite different. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is alive and well in the film, but in fact dissolved in 1991.
Technologies which are portrayed as common in the film, but are not, include commonplace space travel, space stations with hotels, moon colonization, suspended animation of humans, common (non-mobile) videophones, and strong artificial intelligence of the kind displayed by HAL.
Soundtrack
Music
Music plays a crucial part in 2001, and not only because of the relatively sparse dialogue. From very early on in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily non-verbal experience, one that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods.
The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial recordings. Most feature films then and now are typically accompanied by elaborate film scores or songs written especially for them by professional composers. In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score for 2001 from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. However, on 2001 Kubrick did much of the filming and editing using, as his guides, the classical recordings which eventually became the music track. In March 1966, MGM became concerned about 2001s progress and Kubrick put together a show reel of footage to the ad hoc soundtrack of classical recordings. The studio bosses were delighted with the results and Kubrick decided to use these 'guide pieces' as the final musical soundtrack, and he abandoned North's score. Kubrick failed to inform North that his music had not been used and, to his dismay, North did not discover this until he saw the movie just prior to its release. What survives of North's soundtrack recordings has been released as a "limited edition" CD from Intrada Records. All the music North originally wrote was recorded commercially by North's friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and was released on Varese Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first theme release but before North's death.
In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick explained:
- However good our best film composers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a multitude of great orchestral music available from the past and from our own time? When you are editing a film, it's very helpful to be able to try out different pieces of music to see how they work with the scene…Well, with a little more care and thought, these temporary tracks can become the final score.
2001 is particularly remembered for using Johann Strauss II's best-known waltz, An der schönen blauen Donau (On The Beautiful Blue Danube), during the extended space-station docking and lunar landing sequences, and the use of the opening from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra (""Thus Spake Zarathustra"), which has now become firmly associated with the film and its themes. The film also introduced the modernistic composer György Ligeti to a wide public.
The Richard and Johann Strauss pieces and Ligeti’s Requiem (the Kyrie section) act as recurring leitmotifs in the film’s storyline. Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra is first heard in the opening title which juxtaposes the sun, earth, and moon. It is subsequently heard when an ape first learns to use a tool, and when Bowman is transformed into the Star-Child at the end of the film. Zarathustra thus acts as a bookend for the beginning and end of the film, and as a motif signifying evolutionary transformations, first from ape to man, then from man to Star-Child. This piece was originally inspired by the philosopher Nietzsche’s book of the same name which talks of the transition from ape to man and from man to Superman. The Blue Danube appears in two intricate and extended space travel sequences as well as the closing credits. The first of these is the particularly famous sequence of the PanAm space plane docking at Space Station V. Ligeti’s Requiem is heard three times, all of them during appearances of the monolith. The first is its encounter with apes just prior to the Zarathustra-accompanied ape discovery of the tool. The second is the monolith's discovery on the Moon, and the third is Bowman's approach to it around Jupiter just before he enters the Star Gate. This last sequence with the Requiem has much more movement in it then the first two, and it transitions directly into the music from Ligeti’s Atmosphères which is heard when Bowman actually enters the Star Gate. No music is heard during the monolith's much briefer final appearance in Dave Bowman’s celestial bedroom which immediately precedes the Zarathustra-accompanied transformation of Bowman into the Star-Child. A shorter excerpt from Atmospheres is heard during the pre-credits prelude and film intermission, which are not in all copies of the film. (Gayane's Adagio) from Aram Khachaturian's Gayaneh ballet suite is heard during the sections that introduce Bowman and Poole aboard the Discovery conveying a somewhat lonely and mournful quality. Other music used is Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna and an electronically altered form of his Aventures, the last of which was so used without Ligeti's permission.
By the time the first word of dialogue is spoken in the film, we have already heard Zarathustra twice, Ligeti's Requiem and the more well-known of the two space travel sequences choreographed to The Blue Danube. The first dialogue in the film - spoken by a space shuttle stewardess - is when Dr. Floyd disembarks at Space Station V, and reads, "Here you are, sir." The last line of dialogue in the film is the pre-recorded debriefing to the Discovery crew (which, by then, consists only of Bowman) explaining the real purpose of their mission. The film's final line is, "Except for a single, very powerful radio emission, aimed at Jupiter, the four-million-year-old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin--and purpose--still a total mystery." This is followed by the approach to the monolith and Bowman's entrance into the Star Gate. Three Ligeti pieces, a recap of Zarathustra when Bowman transforms, and the last of three appearances of The Blue Danube during the closing credits all follow the closing line of dialogue.
Also sprach Zarathustra has been widely used in many other contexts since 2001 made it well known. This includes a disco version by Eumir Deodato which was used in the film Being There, and its use as the ring entrance music for now-retired pro wrestler Ric Flair. It was also used as Elvis Presley's stage entrance music in the late years of his career.
HAL's haunting version of the popular song "Daisy Bell" (referred to by HAL as "Daisy" in the film) was inspired by a computer synthesized arrangement by Max Mathews, which Arthur C. Clarke had heard in 1962 at the Bell Laboratories Murray Hill facility when he was, coincidentally, visiting friend and colleague John Pierce. At that time, a speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell" ("Bicycle Built For Two"), with Max Mathews providing the musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later used it in the screenplay and novel.
"Daisy" did not survive in many foreign language versions of the film. In the French soundtrack to 2001, HAL sings the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" while being disconnected. In the German version, HAL sings the children's song "Hänschen Klein" ("Johnny Little") and in the Italian version HAL sings "Giro giro tondo."
Soundtrack album
The initial MGM soundtrack album release contained none of the material from the altered and uncredited rendition of "Adventures", used a different recording of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" than that heard in the film, and a longer excerpt of "Lux Aeterna" than that in the film.
In 1996, Turner Entertainment released a new soundtrack on CD which included the material from "Adventures" and restored the version of "Zarathustra" used in the film, and used the shorter version of "Lux Aeterna" from the film. As additional "bonus tracks" at the end, this CD includes the versions of "Zarathustra" and "Lux Aeterna" on the old MGM soundtrack, an unaltered performance of "Adventures", and a 9-minute compilation of all of Hal's dialogue from the film.
According to the Internet Movie Database,
The end music credits do not list a conductor and orchestra for "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Stanley Kubrick wanted the Herbert von Karajan / Vienna Philharmonic version on English Decca for the film's soundtrack, but Decca executives did not want their recording "cheapened" by association with the movie, and so gave permission on the condition that the conductor and orchestra were not named. After the movie's successful release, Decca tried to rectify its blunder by re-releasing the recording with an "As Heard in 2001" flag printed on the album cover. John Culshaw recounts the incident in "Putting the Record Straight" (1981)... In the meantime, MGM released the "official soundtrack" L.P. with Karl Böhm's Berlin Philharmonic "Also Sprach Zarathustra" discretely substituting for von Karajan's version.
As previously mentioned, Alex North's original score has twice been released, first in 1993 on a Varese Sarabande CD re-recording by Jerry Goldsmith and the National Philharmonic Orchestra, and finally in a 2008 Intrada release of the actual North recordings.
Dialogue
Alongside its use of music, the dialogue (or lack thereof) in 2001 is another notable feature. The relative absence of dialogue and conventional narrative cues has baffled many viewers. A particularly striking feature of the film is the complete absence of dialogue for the entirety of both the first and last 20 minutes or so of the film; the total narrative of these sections, totalling almost 45 minutes, is carried by images, actions, sound effects, a great deal of music (See Music) and two title cards.
Only when the film moves into the postulated future of 2000 and 2001, do we encounter characters who speak. By the time shooting began, Kubrick had deliberately jettisoned much of the intended dialogue and narration, and what remains is notable for its apparently banal nature, while it is juxtaposed with spectacularly beautiful scenes of space. The first scenes of dialogue are Floyd's three encounters on the space station. They are preceded by the spectacular space docking sequence choreographed to Strauss's The Blue Danube waltz and followed by a second extended sequence of his travel to the moon with more Strauss, the two sequences acting as bookends to his space-station stopover. In the stopover itself, we get idle chit-chat with the colleague who greets him followed by Floyd's slightly more affectionate phone call to his daughter, and the distantly friendly but awkwardly strained encounter with Soviet scientists. Later, en route to the monolith, Floyd engages in trite exchanges with his staff while we see a spectacular journey by Earthlight across the moon's surface. Generally, the most memorable--and arguably most human--dialogue in the film belongs to the computer Hal and Hal's exchanges with David Bowman. Hal is the only character in the film who openly expresses anxiety (primarily around his disconnection), as well as feelings of pride and bewilderment.
The first line of dialogue is the space-station stewardess saying "Here you are, sir. Main level D." The final line is a conclusion of the pre-recorded Jupiter mission briefing about the monolith. "Except for a single, very powerful radio emission, aimed at Jupiter, the four-million-year-old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin--and purpose--still a total mystery."
Sequels, offshoots and adaptations
Kubrick did not envisage a sequel to 2001, fearing the later exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet). To the dismay of MGM Studios, he ordered all prints of unused scenes, sets, props, miniatures, and production blueprints destroyed. Most of these materials were lost, with several notable exceptions, including a 79-inch model of the spaceship Discovery One. It was salvaged and appeared in modified form in Space 1999. One of Hal's eyepieces is in the possession of the author of HAL's Legacy, David G. Stork.
Clarke went on to write three sequel novels: 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). 3001: The Final Odyssey reconnects with Frank Poole, who has been found drifting by a ship that was looking for frozen water near the edge of the solar system. Sufficiently preserved by the vacuum of space, he is revived by the advanced medical technology of the time and becomes the novel's protagonist.
The only filmed sequel, 2010, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel and was released in 1984. Kubrick was not involved in the production of this film, which was directed by Peter Hyams in a straightforward style with more dialogue. Clarke saw it as a fitting adaptation of his novel. As Kubrick had ordered all models and blueprints from 2001 destroyed, Hyams was forced to recreate these models from scratch for 2010. Hyams also claimed that he would not make the film had he not received both Kubrick's and Clarke's blessings. There has been no discussion of filmmakers adapting the other two for the screen, although actor Tom Hanks has expressed interest in possible adaptations of 2061 and 3001.
Beginning in 1976, Marvel Comics published both a Jack Kirby-written and drawn comic adaptation of the film and a Kirby-created 10-issue monthly series "expanding" on the ideas of the film and novel.
2001, due to its grandeur, is a frequent source of parody. Mel Brooks devotes the short pre-title sequence of History of the World, Part 1 to the dawn of man, parodying Kubrick's cave men and using the Zarathustra soundtrack. The Simpsons episode "Deep Space Homer" made several references to 2001, the Treehouse of Horror episode "House of whacks" parodies the computer HAL, and the episode "Lisa's Pony" has a Homer dream-sequence parodying 2001's "Dawn of Man" sequence. The 1972 comedy The Groove Tube opens with humanoids discovering a TV (in place of a monolith). Similarly, in Charlie and the Chocolate factory, a chocolate bar surrounded by apes appears instead of the monolith. A Monty Python's Flying Circus episode features an ape touching a mysterious red line, then thinking (visualized as a lightbulb over his head) before getting a bone from nearby animal skeleton, smashing it and throwing the bone high into space. The bone blends into a satellite, which finally crashes onto the ape. The animated series "Duckman" has an episode Gripes of Wrath, in which a super-computer is overloading from paradoxical comments made by Duckman, and begins to sing "Daisy, Daisy" as does Hal when David Bowman is disconnecting him. In a recent Lucky Luke animation, Tous à l'Ouest: Une aventure de Lucky Luke, we see the Dalton brothers in a streetcar ejected into the air into a starry sky background to the music of "The Blue Danube."
In the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory there is a scene where they visit the TV Room and the TV in the room is playing 2001. When Willy Wonka sends the chocolate bar through TV, the chocolate bar appears where the rectangle that apes admire was. The main title for 2001 is also played in this scene. An internet based video series called "Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series" also parodies 2001, with a monolith covered in Duel Monsters cards singing "Daisy, Daisy" and stating "This is a 2001 parody, by the way".
The 2008 film WALL-E includes some references to 2001. An artificial intelligence named Auto sports an eye similar to HAL 9000's, and Also Sprach Zarathustra is used in a pivotal sequence when a ship's captain with severe bone loss (like all humans in the film) manages to stand up and stop Auto from taking over the spaceship. The 2008 video game Spore contains a sequence activated if a player's species achieves sentience. In it the creature smashes a stick and throws it in the air, set to Also Sprach Zarathustra. The music is interrupted when the stick comes back down and hits the creature on the head. A 12/2008 Jared commercial has "Dave"'s GPS computer asking to see the jewelry he's just purchased, and when he insists that the machine just provide driving instructions, it replies "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid can't do that" and locks the car's doors.
The nature and design of the computer "Ariia" in the 2008 film "Eagle Eye" is an homage to HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its final disconnect is also accomplished by a character named Bowman. The Ariia supercomputer has a red eye like HALs, takes actions against humanity based on a draconian interpretation of its programming, and detects plots against it by lip-reading.
See also
External links
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