Dude, you have to be stoned to watch this movie.
I love this movie, but I’ll admit that I usualy drift off to sleep during the journey through the monolith at the end.
I’ve never watched the entire film from start to finish in one sitting so that may say something about it. As a ten year old, it was probably a bit too slow paced compared to more action oriented SciFi fare like Star Wars or Star Trek.
My buddy and I caught in in a bar the other day though. No sound, but between the closed caption and remembering the movie, we could still follow along. The movie is still very visually and emotionally impressive. To echo what Icerigger said, very few space films actually convey the unforgiving vastness and lonliness of outer space. I mean you’re really like “well…Dave certainly seems calm, but what is he going to do if HAL decides not to open the pod bay doors and just leaves him out there?”
An amazing film on every level–visuals, audio, concepts.
The big concept that seems to run through the film is the development and advancement of consciousness, from the very dawn of human consciousness (in the use of tools) to future travels into space (and beyond!). The conflict in the center of the film is the struggle between the astronauts and HAL–a man-made machine that has attained a level of self-awareness comparable to human consciousness, and which (like any consciousness) is desperate to defend itself against the possibility of annihilation.
Much of the film moves very slowly, admittedly–but I couldn’t imagine it any other way. The slow process by which the primate tribe learns how to take back their water hole–the beautiful (but slow) journey to the moon–the Jupiter mission–the (apparently final) evolutionary leap taken by Bowman as the Starchild–it’s meant, I think, for the viewer to contemplate these immense stretches of time and space, and how humans have used our minds (through technology) to bridge these gaps. Ultimately, though, consciousness itself is something that transcends technology, although what it consists of is still a mystery (just like the final scenes of the movie).
It probably helps to watch it stoned.
The images are stunning and when the plot starts moving it sucks you in but that pacing is a real problem. The issue is that Kubrick takes the world and establishes the hell out of. He needs to convey the idea that we’re viewing the earth at the dawn of humanity so he takes fifteen minutes of people in ape suits milling around. How to establish space travel? Watch a minute and a half long shot of a space ship slowly moving through frame.
Definitely not a plot-based movie. Not to be recommended for people who apply ratings according to the number of car chases in a movie. A good, nearly great film, though I prefer (if I had to choose, which thankfully I don’t) Tarkovsky’s response to it, Solyaris. An even greater film, and one with even fewer car chases. If you can’t give yourself over to the movie, and allow it to dictate the pace of the experience, it will bore you to tears. That’s what Rush Hour 22 is for.
I saw it for my 14th birthday at a Cinerama theater. I still have the program. (Remember when big movie releases used to have programs?) 2001 just blew me away–I had seen “good” movies growing up, but Kubrick’s epic was in another category altogether. It was truly a formative moment in my appreciation for what movies could be.
Nothing of any import to add, except that for its time, it was a great film.
Also just wanted to say hello to Quasimodal!
Q
I saw it several times in the original release in a Cinerama theater with a giant screen. I never thought it slow; just realisticly paced. But the ending made no sense at all, in the book or movie.
Most of the theatergoers I went with considered it mandatory to get stoned during the intermission so they were ready for the second half light show.
And it spoiled me for Star Wars, since 2001 was accurate with respect to the lack of sound in space, and Star Wars was junk.
I think if you’re 16 and drop acid, you’re appreciation of the movie is outside of your primitive space-time continuum.
Not that I did that.
And I hate Hamlet because of all those cliched lines.
I saw it first at the Capitol Theater in NY, where it opened, in Cinerama. I got it immediately, but then I had read all of Clarke and also read the Life Magazine article on it. I’ve seen it 30 times at least.
As for the effects, someone in the features on the new DVD release (much, much better than the first) said that 2001 is the ultimate in effects done without a computer. That’s to control the stop motion, like Star Wars did, not even CGI. Just consider that nothing came close to its effects for 9 years, an eternity even back then.
Sure the pacing is slow, even back then, but on the other hand the average movie pacing was nothing like it is today. And it isn’t called “Odyssey” for nothing. Odysseus didn’t take a jump jet to get to Ithaca, after all.
2001 is about really big ideas. For instance, consider the parallel between the state of the earth in the first section and the second. Maybe the people in 2001 weren’t at risk of dying out from hunger, but the first satellite shown the the Blue Danube was an orbiting bomb.
Maybe it didn’t get the existence of a space station right, but the paranoid government in 2001 it got exactly right.
It made perfect sense, especially if you’re up on your Clarke. Remember, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. 2001 is the first, and maybe only, movie which didn’t chicken our in this regard. Kubrick’s decision not to show the aliens was one of his best.
I’ve always liked the light show fine unstoned, btw.
There’s something else that happens with this movie on TV, and it took me a long time to notice it.
For the first ~20 minutes, there is absolutely no camera movement. There are cuts from one shot to another, but the camera is always absolutely fixed. There’s a scene where a large cat jumps down off an overhang and attacks one of the Australopethicines. Without letterboxing, the only way to show it is with pan-and-scan, and that introduces a movement that was never meant to be there.
I’m convinced that Kubrick shot it that way intentionally. It’s a primitive world. Until the monolith shows up, there is not a smooth surface anywhere to be seen, or even imagined. Any sort of camera movement would have called attention to the mechanics of making the film.
On the other hand Homer didn’t spend a third of the Odyssey on divine dinner party before Discordia threw in a golden apple, then another third on lengthy sections of how wonderful the Greek ships looked, and a significant portion of what was left on random words that don’t form sentences.
I saw 2001 in April of 1968, in its first New York City run, probably in the first week it was released. It was rare in those days for there to be a big budget science fiction film, and since I had loved Dr. Strangelove, I wanted to see it. I had heard it was somewhat deep and mysterious and really looked forward to it.
I was unimpressed.
The pace was slow, but that didn’t bother me as much as the lack of story )though the section with Dave and Hal was a nice little SF short film). And the last half hour, while technically advanced, was ultimately a pointless light show.
I later realized that the problem was this: Kubrick had painted himself into a corner. In order for the film to work, he had to say some deep truths about the universe. But he didn’t have anything to say (it’s a difficult job, so I’m not surprised). So he punted and gave us bright, shiny lights.
The film was clealy influential, especially since it is the blueprint for films today: forget about plot and characters, just show bright shiny lights (aka action sequences, special effect sequences, etc.) and razzle dazzle 'em.
I did see the film againin 1994. It didn’t hold up all that well, though I didn’t find it all that terrible. What was most amusing was the scene on the moon when the people are told to just trust the government to handle the situation, and they all nodded and didn’t object.
Dude, have you read Homer’s Odyssey? Cuz, yeah, he kinda did just that.
This is my favorite film. It’s about big ideas, but what’s great about it is that the big ideas are different for everyone who watches it. For me, it’s about the relationship of man and his tools, with HAL being the latest and greatest tool invented. This is why it makes sense that HAL tried to kill the crew. It was all about who got to make contact - man or tools. This is one interpretation, there are others.
But 2001 is great also because of the incredible cinematography. And also so many of the scenes are amazing enough that they are classic. The ape throwing the bone (and the edit following which is probably the greatest edit in movie history), the monolith on the moon, space station, lip reading, the pod bay doors, disassembling HAL, through the monolith, the hotel room, the earth. Some of those scenes have incredible tension, some have unusual beauty, and some have both.
This movie has the most accurate and most entrancing space-flight scenes. The most brutal murder in movie history. The only major movie with a completely surreal ending.
And, BTW, I recommend not seeing it stoned. Pot will induce the entirely wrong mood, but LSD is better. But sober is best of all.
Yes, I have. Many times. He did nothing like that. The closest to what I described in Homer is the recitation of the Greek forces in The Iliad and that was a small portion of the work rather than the bulk of it. Homer didn’t spend a significant amount of time on establishing things to the point that the reader just wanted him to get on with it.
He wasn’t Virgil, after all.
I thought it was slow and boring even when I was one of those drug-taking college students in the early 70s. I do like the Hal section - I like my fiction plot based, thank you very much. That’s my answer to the OP.
great movie but I thought I was going to slit my wrists for the first thirty minutes into it. Those monkeys are boring.
9 years? There’s a lot of CGI in the past few years alone that just doesn’t cut in in comparison and not just the low budget TV shows. I thought the model work was great, the whole thing really did give the image (as mentioned above) of being deep in space, inside a functioning space ship.