I think this is one of those cases where it is better not to know how things fared out for Truman, for two reasons. One, it would be a subject matter that would probably require its own film, which would likely be a depressing character study of a man struggling to cope. Another ten or twenty minutes tacked on showing what Truman did next would not actually be long enough to answer that question more than superficially, and could in no way fit with the tone of the film that preceeded it. It would be a change of pace lambasted as much as the Aliens in AI. I guess you could do a Bill and Ted style newspaper headline montage over the closing credits, but I dont think that would suit either.
More importantly, the original ends with Truman full of hope and wonder as he faces his now undetermined future. No matter what the director presents as what Truman did next, it could not maintain that feeling of hope. Everybody will have their own interpretation of how Truman fared out, and seeing some scenario (good or bad) presented as canon will only take away that feeling of promise. The reality could never match our own feelings and the film would be less because of that.
It would be interesting to compare “The Truman show” with “Castaway” when wondering if it is better to always show what happened next. Is Castaway better for showing the effects of Tom Hanks return from the Island?
Like Miller further down, I believe that your understanding is guided by having read the book of the film (or some other explanation of what appears on screen). The film itself does not explain what is happening.
I read Clarke’s book in 1968 or 1969 when the film had come out - it was developed with the film script and was not a retrospective novelisation of a script like many such books. I had also read his earlier short story “the Sentinel” before I saw the film. Indeed, I thought the film had stolen the idea of the moon scene, before I learned that Clarke was involved in the production.
However, before I read the book, my response was WTF, and that was shared by most of the original audience. Everyone said “Great film, pity about the weird ending.”
Just to note, as I have before, that the ending of the movie My Fair Lady is not original with the movie. It’s not even original with Lerner and Lowe’s stage version. This ending actually appears in the original 1938 Leslie Howard/Wendy Hiller film of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion – despite the fact that Shaw himself is credited as working on the film (they didn’t merely use his play – they got him). Clearly, they didn’t feel constrained to abide by his script (iMDB lists four other writers). And clearly, Alan Jay Lerner, in writing about changing the ending (which he did in the published version of My Fair Lady didn’t feel compelled to reveal that his contribution wasn’t original with him.
Pygmalion, the original play, has essentially the same ending with a note from GBS affirming that Eliza marries Freddie with some financial help from Higgins and Pickering. What other change was there to the ending?
In the play (and in the original screenplay written by Shaw) Eliza goes off with Freddy. In the film Pygmalion, Eliza goes back to Higgins.
Mt jaw dropped the first time I saw the film. I’d seen Pygmalion the play and read Shaw’s screenplay, and had seen My Fair Lady on stage and screen and read Lerner’s note about changing the ending. Nothing prepared me to see that the film Pygmalion ended as My Fair Lady did.
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I saw the film just before the book came out - or at least before I bought it. (I have a first edition hardcover.) Now, I admit I was given a hint by the Life Magazine feature on 2001, which showed the trip sequence, but Childhood’s End gave enough of a clue. I had read pretty much everything Clarke wrote up to that point when I saw the movie.
The musical cue should be enough to tie the two events together. Plus, the Starchild had Bowman’s eyes.
Now the reviews republished in Agel’s book make it clear that the standard reviewer of the time who had never read “scifi” had not clue for the most part - but I bet Roger Ebert got it right away.
That’s partly true - I saw the movie a couple times as a little kid, because I’d watch just about anything that had spaceships in it, and like I said, it didn’t make any sense. Read the book in high school, which was about the time I was getting old enough to figure this sort of stuff out on my own, watched the film again and went, “Oh!”
Still, looking at the film as an adult, I maintain that the ending is not that difficult to figure out. The parallel between Bowman and Moonwatcher is obvious - big black monolith shows up and makes ape-man smarter. Millenia later, big black monolith shows up and makes hu-man smarter. The only major intuitive leap necessary is recognizing that what’s happening to Bowman after he finds the monolith is as incomprehensible to us, as what happened to Bowman before he finds to the monolith would be to the ape-men at the beginning of the film. I know I got that specific idea from Clarke’s book, but I’m reasonably certain I’d have puzzled it out on my own. Certainly, I’ve made sense out of less coherent films. Other aspects of my interpretation are, I believe, original to myself - which is not to say that I invented them, but that I arrived at them without outside aid.
Don’t mistake me. I believe 2001 A Space Odyssey is one of the best films made - but as I have said, it must be viewed in a cinema to fully understand why the camera work is so good.
