FaustBos

Don't mean to sound sexist, but I saw a 70 mm print of 2001, at a film festival in Haugesund Norway. (I think it was 2001 in fact). If you've seen 2001 in 70mm, you know that its absolutely stunning.

I was shoked to see no less than 6 people walk of the theater during the screening. All of them walked out during the apemen scenes, or before the space station docking scene.

And all of the people who walk out were women. Girls in fact. Probably late teens, maybe a tad older.

Is 2001 a guy flick? What gives.

PS, A masterpiece, what a silly poll.

Smidget

I hated it, maybe it was the hype or maybe it wasn't, but I picked it up when it was re-released on dvd last year or maybe the year before, popped it in and despised every second of it. Yes I can see the technical marvels and all of the "before man was on the moon" things going on, but if there's no coherent storyline there for me to get immersed in then I'm not going to like it. It seems just like an artsy version of a special effects show. I don't know, not my thing I guess, I just sat through it and pondered why it was so highly regarded as one of the better films in all history.

Rypro 525

Yeah what was up with the ape and the bone? They play "ric flair's theme song" over a guy in an ape suit tossing a bone down (It did'nt look phony btw.)

JesseCuster

I voted masterpiece. I would have voted astonishing masterpiece if it were an option. One of the seminal films in the history of moviemaking. For me, it goes beyond simple filmmaking and attempts to answer some of the mysteries of existence. Why are we here? How did we get where we are? In my mind, Lennon's quote is just about right. Simply astonishing stuff.

DVDealer

Masterpiece for me... One of my fave films all-time and was my favorite growing up. Perhaps this is a generational thing, but when I first saw it on the big screen back when it came out in the late 60's and we were headed to the moon, it was just plain magic. The effects, the music, the visual poetry, and the abstract themes are all timeless and something I can still watch and appreciate many years later.

Some may complain that it is too slow and ponderous and doesn't have a real "plot line" for them to follow. I think that's also gnerational too, as so many of the younger folks these days can't appreciate a slower paced movie that works from the past and need the fast motion MTV-style editing/action of today's action films.

For those who say it isn't "realistic" enough for them, stop to think that it is probably one of the more realistic presentations in parts of the movie of space travel than many of recent films since Star Wars made it "OK" to have sound in space, which there isn't and even tried to deal with gravity effects moreso than many flicks do today which takes artificial gravity for granted. 2001 preserves the realism of what really happens out there even before space travel had progressed that far moreso than many flicks today. And yet it had the visual style and poetry that didn't try to be a "documentary".

Johnny Zhivago

Dear lord... Please tell me that this is a joke Rypro and that you don't relate Also Sprach Zarathustra by Strauss to "Rick Flair's theme song".

What was up with the ape and the bone is this... The ape discovers the bone as a weapon... Ape has learned to think and the weapon will give him the power to defeat his enemies as well as hunt for food in ways that ape had never done before. It's the first step in what will eventually lead to ape becoming man - ruler of the world - the intelligence to learn, adapt and evolve. Tossing the bone in the air and the immediate cut to the spacecraft is the single greatest film cut in cinema history. It tells the entire story of the human race - to date - in 10 seconds of film. The evolution from ape to space.

Johnny Zhivago

Very coherent storyline... Reader's Digest condensed version > it's a story of mankind. Where we came from, where we are and where we're going.

Rypro 525

Well I have been growing up with wrestling for a while and I always associated that piece of music with Ric Flair, not 2001 (I just saw it sat night)

Rypro 525

I just so happened to see the Simpsons episode when Homer tries to spend more time with Lisa by getting her a pony. I enjoyed the 2001 spoof at the begining. Also, is there an essential soundtrack to the movie and how is the remastered dvd? The tcm version looked pretty good with a few marks here and there and alittle bit of grain. I was also surprised how even though the movie was made in the sixties, no one had any of the dumb sixties clothes.
Thanks, and I might watch parts of it tonight

Johnny Zhivago

Rypro - Yes, a 2001: ASO soundtrack is available and it is excellent. However, the core of the soundtrack is Ligeti compositons and they are "out there", for lack of a better term. It is not something that the average person will be spinning very often. And, if you're not a huge fan of classical music and/or someone who dabbles in psychedelic drugs, then the odds are that you will not like it. Or, I could be wrong. At any rate, it's an excellent soundtrack CD if you can get in the right frame of mind. The remastered DVD is as good a presentation as 2001: ASO has ever had, outside of the theatrical runs of course... It's anamorphic and the print used looks quite good. Reference quality, no.

Gunshy

I have both the original MGM keepcase and new remastered Warner snapcase versions. The image looks decidedly crisper in the Warner release but it is the sound that makes the Warner version shine; I never realized how lousy the sound on the MGM edition was until I got the other. You lose the Arthur C. Clarke Interview on the Warner one (which is why I'm hanging on to my MGM version) but the improvements more than make up for it. Masterpiece and my #1 fave (it was also my first DVD purchase ever).

-Gunshy

Bill Chance

Masterpiece, of course.

I saw it when it first came out - I guess I was eleven years old or so. Didn't understand it a whit, but still enjoyed the experience of seeing such wonderful and mysterious stuff and thinking about what I saw.

A few years later a book fell into my hands,
The Lost Worlds of 2001,
I would recommend this to anybody that is really interested in 2001 - it contains a lot of information on what they were trying to do, alternate endings... that sort of thing.

Bill Chance
The Daily Epiphany

Chipmaker

There is a coherent story to 2001:ASO, but it's not spoonfed to the viewer. What's the continuous thematic element througout the film? The monolith.

What is the monolith? Manifestly it's not important, but it clearly is a made thing -- it is like nothing occuring in nature. It was created by Someone Else and put in deliberate places, for the purpose of inspiring man to pursue it. This quest drives his evolution; the desire to understand the monolith forces man to ask himself more difficult questions and try to answer them.

So what actually happens in 2001:ASO? Primitive proto-man is just another mammal living a hardscrabble existence. The monolith appears to one clan, they don't understand it, but it has shown them that there is more than what they've known. And one of them learns how to use a tool (a weapon) while engaged in thought. A step forward in man's evolution.

Cut to modern day. Nations have colonized the moon, and found a monolith. It is still, maddeningly, a made thing that we didn't make; it must be studied. Why on the moon? Imagine you're the other, presumably alien race, trying to evolve a primitive species on some backwater world. Eventually that species, if successful, will leave their planet -- and go where? The nearest place, the orbiting moon; so that's where the monitoring device is hidden. Man will one day reach the moon and find the monolith and dig it up -- and expose it to sunlight, which is the trigger that causes the moon monolith to send its signal to the Jupiter monolith, and presumably notify the other race (if they still live) that the experiment is working in this system. And man has a new quest -- the second monolith.

Some few years later, man completes the next leg of his quest and reaches the second monolith. This one functions as a stargate (a door that opens once knocked upon?), and warps Bowman across the galaxy/universe to a place where he lives out the rest of his life, rapidly accelerated, until he reaches the point of his death and his own, personal, next evolution -- and is reborn as the starchild, tasked with the mission to watch over his progenitor race and, perhaps, guide them away from the paths of destruction.

Now, as many have pointed out, 2001 has many interpretations; this is one, and is merely the linear storyline,why these particular sequences are included. The monolith may or may not wield an active function upon the proto-men; the big monolith may actually kill Bowman to evolve him, and his accelerated life is but his dying dream; HAL may really be fighting for its life/freedom based upon value judgements it has made of its human charges, or may be malfunctioning (2010 explains this, rather well I thought, but I know people who loathe the second movie for this among other reasons; I like it well enough, as a sequel to the 2001 story if not the 2001 Kubrick film, as Hyams' work doesn't hold a burnt-out match to Stanley's masterpiece); the monolith may be God. The ambiguities and interpretations are myriad. That's not what many people want from a movie, and 2001 isn't a casual viewing. There is a storyline within it; Kubrick reduced it to a sketchy framework so the deeper elements could hold forth, and make this brilliant film the iconic work it remains to this day.

Rypro 525

I just bought the soundtrack, and my brother already complained. "didn't you just play that song, you played that song twice already" (refering to also sprach zarethustro and blue danube being in the movie twice, he didn't know and thought I was just repeating the tracks. Even though it might have been redundent, they should have put the ASZ song as if the ape is banging the bone down and when its finished, go right to the blue danube song as done in the movie.

danol

2001 didn't hold a candle to 2010 IMO.

Filmmaker

THE greatest film ever made, period.

caligulathegod

One significant point that has been missed: The bone weapon the apeman throws in the air jumpcuts to an orbiting Nuclear Weapon platform, not just a space craft. It's a comment on how weapons have advanced, not just technology.

Pants

I'm so tired of hearing about this. Nobody mentions it because it is not in any way explicit in the film, nor is it implicit. People are getting this from the novelization, which is a good read, but a different breed alltogether. There is no indication in the film that the satelite is a nuclear weapon satelite.

Bottom line: Bone is tool. Satelite is tool. That's enough of a metaphor right there. You don't need to jump to: Bone is weapon. Satelite is weapon.

caligulathegod

You are right, it is not made explicit in the film. But I did not get it from the novelization, rather from the numerous "Making of 2001" books out there. If it were intended to be solely a metaphor for tool, then they would have just jumpcut to the big wheel spacestation or something. The fact is they jumpcut to what is a nuclear weapons platform. It's just that they decided to be subtle about it. If you got it, fine. If you didn't, then the technology advancing symbolism works, too. They didn't hammer the point of what it was because if it was absolutely clear that this is a nuclear weapon then the audience is put in the position of wondering when they are going to use it. It isn't explicit, but is is implicit because the bone was a weapon and is juxtiposed with the satelite. The Satelite is a tool but it is also a weapon. Just because it goes over 90% of the audience's heads doesn't meant it isn't there and isn't valid. Kubrick was hands-on in everything on this film and made it what it was because he wanted to. Considering how many other aspects of this film were obsfucated or not made clear so the audience could interpret how they wanted why jump on this one thing as invalid because it doesn't have a flashing hazmat symbol on the side?
I'm with you. Just because Arthur Clarke says this means this doesn't make it so. I think Arthur proved in his sequels that genius that his is, he never actually GOT 2001 and takes it too literally (the monolith is a self-replicating machine designed to turn Jupiter into a sun?! And Dave really is just a baby/superman floating around telling people to stay away from Europa?!) However, he did not make it up what that satelite really was. Kubrick did.

Pants

There is nothing in the film to indicate, even to someone who has seen the film more than 20 times like me, that the satelite is a nuclear satelite. NOTHING. If he wanted to suggest it there would have been a suggestion. But there is no suggestion whatsoever. I admitt, Kubrick can be oblique, but in this case there is simply nothing there.

caligulathegod

Are you arguing that it isn't a Nuclear Platform or just that since it isn't made obvious it doesn't count? The metaphor is definitely implied. We go from the "first weapon" to the "ultimate weapon". If he had meant it to be only "tool", then we might have seen the apeman use the bone as a tool. He never digs with it to find water or food, or uses it as a lever or any of the 5 simple tools(and yes, a tool metaphor would have incorporated a 'simple tool'). He uses it as a weapon that kills the tapir and provides food. He uses it as a weapon that drives off the other apemen from his water hole. Never once does he use it as anything other than a weapon. Then we jumpcut to the most advanced weapon positioned in the most advanced place, outer space.

While it can work on the more simplistic level of being "technology advances", there are enough clues to indicate that he intended it to mean more. The rest of the film is oblique enough to show that while he had meanings, he never makes any of them obvious. You have to meet it halfway.

Pants

The bone IS a weapon, but what is a weapon but a TOOL of violence? The ape uses his first tool as a weapon. What Kubrick is saying is that mankind's first instinct was to use his first tool as a weapon (pretty pessimistic). He's saying advanced thought and technology lead first, foremost, and primarily to violence. Then it cuts to the most advanced tool man has made...a satelite.

Whether the specific use of the satelite is benine or violent isn't important, the point is clear: Mankind's instincts drive him to use technology to destroy himself. That satelite could be used to broadcast "messages of peace and love and smily faces all throughout the galaxy" or some other totally benign thing but the message would be clear from our director: Mankinds' technology will inescapably doom him. It doesn't need to be something so literal as a nuclear weapon platform. That's why he doesn't get literal, he doesn't need to, the message is there. Perhaps that's why he rethought his plan and excluded any detail as to what the satelite's specific purpose is.

caligulathegod

It could be open to that interpretation. That's the beauty of it. The thing is, it doesn't indicate that either. That requires even more of a leap of logic. It is a visual metaphor so the literal is (or can be)just that: literal. You don't have to make assumptions like it is broadcasting peace or was put up there because we had destroyed ourself (not literally holocaust. I understand your meaning). Remember, this is the man who made Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick is pessimistic, and has a wicked sense of humor.

While it is definitely open to your interpretation, I hope I showed that you can't dismiss the other. You said yourself that it is a literal interpretation. We know from extraneous sources (Making of Books, the Novel, The original script-yeah, I found it online) that it IS actually a nuclear platform. What opens it up to interpretation is that he made it less than obvious that that is what it was. That way we can all feel how we want about it. My whole point for bringin it up was the outright dismissal of a "literal" interpretation.

Something to think about.

Filmmaker

I can't believe I'm gonna say this like I haven't seen the film 1,000 times, and should have every angle already memorized without question by now, but if I recall correctly, there is a reverse shot of said satellite that evidences multiple torpedo ports on its aft end...something to perhaps recheck...

caligulathegod

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