I respectfully disagree. I believe that, without knowledge in the book, the film is unclear. (Look how many people used to think the Star Child blew up the earth at the end.) Without foreknowledge, how many people can understand the Beyond the Infinite sequence? I hadn’t seen the movie until after I had read both 2001 and Lost Worlds of 2001, so I had help, but just watching it cold I don’t think it’s clear at all what is happening.
Plus my favorite part: in every scene in the film, someone is eating. That’s in there for a reason, but what is it? I’ve never seen discussion of the relation of food to the plot, or to the effect of the Monolith on humanity. Lots of discussion about the star gate, but none on food.* I think the first spoken dialog (after 35 minutes into the film!) is about food.
*OK before I posted this, I did a check - yep, others have noticed.
“Why are the dimensions of the monolith 1 to 4 to 9? Sit down: the answer will shock you. 1:4:9 are the proportions of ingredients in a recipe. What recipe? Those are the proportions of butter to half-and-half to sugar used in chocolate fudge, a bar of which the monolith resembles.”
Wow. I guess I started it in OP, but some of you don’t just like 2001; you think anyone who doesn’t is an idiot. And JerrySTL evidently didn’t bother to read my #24.
As I mentioned, I did watch 2001 47 years ago and may have liked it then. Some movies don’t age well, though which don’t depends on taste. (I find Casablanca to be a timeless classic, but many youngish people can’t watch it at all.)
I’ll concede that you 2001 admirers have your reasons, though I find it baffling that the long tedious scenes don’t seem over-long to you. If disliking the movie means I’m not “in with the in-crowd” then so be it. :rolleyes:
Let me introduce you: JerrySTL, meet The Excluded Middle. TEM, meet JerrySTL.
In simpler terms, people think 2001 is boring because it (subjectively for them) IS boring, not because it doesn’t have constant explosions. Geeze!
I like the movie, but, to paraphrase Bowman, my god, it’s full of tedium! I can think a lot faster than this movie’s pace. I GET it already, Stanley, get the story going.
Yes, one part is unclear. I’ve said that in this thread and in other threads. But “unclear” isn’t the same as “abstract”. Surreal is a better description, as that can often be “unclear”, too. Keep in mind that the book was rather ambiguous, too, so any interpretation of what Starchild does not necessarily wrong. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he’d think of something. Well, maybe he thought of destroying the earth.
While I personally like 2001 and other “slow” films, I’m really tired of this stupid comeback— with or without the usual accompanying reference to Michael Bay, which I shall assume PSXer made ironically.
Slow and artsy-fartsy does not automatically make a film good, nor its fans intellectuals.
I see what you are saying. (Note that the “he’d think of something” isn’t in the movie. Just the book. Kind of supports my point.)
I am basing my abstract comment (which maybe isn’t the best descriptor) more on pacing. Take the Dawn of Man sequence: Wikipedia has this summary:
In an African desert millions of years ago, a tribe of man-apes is driven from their water hole by a rival tribe. They wake to find a featureless black monolith has appeared before them. One man-ape realizes how to use a bone as a tool and weapon; the tribe kills the leader of their rivals and reclaims the water hole.
That’s 35 minutes of the film! With that much screen time, the audience shouldn’t be faulted for thinking there might be more going on than this. So they may look for more (like the constant eating) and wonder if there is more going on.
So by abstract I mean that perhaps the DoM isn’t only about the Monolith teaching humans the use of tools, but maybe is about how humans cannot live peacefully without dying off. That violence is inherent in our nature. The Monolith gave us the knowledge to use tools for the purpose of survival, but we used them to kill instead. The DoM is an “abstract” painting of the fall of man. It’s a Bosch painting.
I don’t mind slow, art-y films. I’m a huge fan of Terrence Malick’s work. However, I absolutely despised 2001. Bored me to tears. Only The English Patient was as dull for me.
What I meant to clarify is that the DoM sequence is all done without words, with “abstract” action. What is Moonwatcher thinking? We can only infer. But what if we are drawing the incorrect conclusions? That’s why I’m comparing it to an abstract painting. What we get out of it might not be what the director intended.
There’s enough background, and a subtle foreground, that any random viewer might take away an entirely different “feel” for what the sequence means. Are they wrong? Are they idiots? Philistines? There are those in this thread who would say yes.
If Kubrick actually intended, say, that the film is not a celebration of man, but instead a condemnation that we will never be as good as the creators of the monolith. That the Starchild really DID blow up the earth at the end. That despite how the Monolith tried to help us, we cannot rise above our nature. Maybe it’s an anti-war film! You could justify that interpretation solely from the film.
Or, more plausibly, people are affected by and react to different things. Like I said, I usually hate slow films and my viewing habits are generally restricted to media of a more episodic nature (e.g. TV series, cartoons, etc.), but this movie hit all the right spots for me.
I find it absorbing when I go to see it at the cinema on a big screen, which I’ve done several times.
I bought a dvd of it several years ago but I think it’s still in it’s plastic wrap as I’ve not yet felt like watching it with all the interruptions and distractions of seeing it at home…
The “you just don’t get it” retort seems to be, if not unique to cinema, at least most prevalent there. If I say that I didn’t like the Steak au Poivre at Chef Untel’s Bistro, I’m unlikely to hear that I probably only eat Whoppers and Big Macs.
Well… maybe in France they might say that. But still.
I thought the point in the movie was reasonably clear: the aliens made a mechanism to human evolution along. First with the ape-men, next with humans. Their ultimate goals are unclear, but presumably, to help sentience reach its full potential.
The exact mechanism of that advancement is not obvious, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest to the story. It isn’t obvious how the monolith made ape-men better thinkers, either; the film shows, but doesn’t tell.
I thought the movie was an awesome work of cinematic art, and it has aged surprisingly well.
The slowness and tediousness is the point; as any blue ocean sailor or seaman can tell you, cruising travel is tediously dull, and space travel will be even moreso. Not only is it boring but it is dehumanizing; it is no accident that HAL-9000 is actually the most engaging character in that segment. The “WTF” feel of travel through the momolith and transformation into the Star-Child replicates the incomprehensibilty of meeting and interacting with a technologically and cognatively superior alien species. The film should be viewed in the context of an existential horror film, with mankimd’s own tools gaining sentience and threatening them (even though doing exactly as having been instructed, owing to the irrational conflict in the instructions that HAL resolved by cleverly manipulating the astronauts into trying to deactivate him and removing the conflict as a defensive response).
Nitpick: the bone transforms into an orbiting weapons platform (both weapons); only after that does the shuttle fly to the rotating space station. The film took Kubrick five years to make using then-groundbreaking practical effects that are still used today.
It loses a lot on the small screen. Watch it in Cinerama, especially coming from a world where the best-produced SF to date had been Star Trek and Forbidden Planet, and you’ll see it differently.
It helps to get stoned before the entry into the monolith scene, but it’s not strictly necessary.
Same happens with music, too. I “don’t get” Bob Dylan. But I’m okay with that. A lot of people obviously do. Same with literature. I found Jack Kerouac’s On The Road tedious and trite, totally over-rated. But many others don’t. I don’t expect to “get” everything. I have no doubt the many people who find meaning and pleasure in these and other works are being sincere. If a work of art doesn’t affect me, it’s completely valid to say I don’t “get” it. Often, I don’t. And, sometimes, something in me changes, so a work that never had much of an effect on me suddenly becomes meaningful, like Pet Sounds. That’s an album I didn’t really think twice about the first decade I heard it, and then, some time in my mid-20s I completely 180’d on it, it being currently my favorite rock album of all time. It’s perfectly okay not to “get” something. If you don’t “get” something, it’s not some kind of failure on your part–it just means that you don’t connect to it for whatever reason.
Some movies hold you in a tight embrace and steer your thoughts in a very particular direction.
2001’s grip is very, very loose. There are few narrative beats, and you’re left to drift along with your thoughts for a long time. It’s less a story and more of a gently-directed rumination. “Mull over this thing for a while … .” If you don’t enjoy doing that sort of thing, it’s going to feel boring.
2001 is thoughtful, majestic and revelatory. The flash-forward from the flung bone to the orbiting weapons satellite is cinematic brilliance of the highest order. The vision of humanity’s future in space is appealing. The sfx still hold up very well. The interplay between HAL, Bowman and Poole has an underlying tension and menace to it that is still compelling. The premise that powerful aliens may help us become starworthy, and that even now, TMA-1 is waiting to be found on the Moon, is intriguing.
All IMHO. But there are certainly those who find it boring.
Listening to HAL say, “I was born in Urbana, Illinois” while sitting in a theater in Urbana, IL started a scream and shout fest that lasted 10 minutes or more. Problably the only time the moview ever got such a reaction – except for other Urbana showings.
I’m not trying to be a dick or anything, but I don’t think you know what abstract films are. This is an example.. There is no story or acting in abstract film.
The DoM sequence is simply acting without dialogue. This is done all the time in film. It’s not unlike the opening of There Will Be Blood. The ending, as I already noted, is more accurately described as surreal or allegorical, but it’s not abstract.
