2001: A Space Odyssey is an influential 1968science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick. The story is based in part on various short stories by co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke, most directly "The Sentinel" (1951), and indirectly Clarke's running themes of humanity's "ascendance" best summed up in Childhood's End (1953). Kubrick collaborated with Clarke, and together they first concurrently produced the novel version that was released alongside the film, and then towards the end Kubrick simultaneously wrote the screenplay.
In early conversations, director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke jokingly called their project How the Solar System Was Won, an allusion to the epic 1962 Cinerama film How the West Was Won, which presents a generation-spanning historical epic told in distinct episodes. Like How the West Was Won, 2001 is divided into distinct episodes.
As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 1972, "Quite early in the game I went around saying, not very loudly, 'MGM doesn't know this yet, but they're paying for the first $10,000,000 religious movie.'"[1]
For an elaboration of the Clarke/Kubrick collaborative work on the book and film, see The Lost Worlds of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, Signet., 1972.
Production
Filming of 2001 began on December 29, 1965 at Shepperton Studios in Shepperton, England. The studio was chosen because of its size; it was large enough for the 60 by 120 by 60 foot pit built as the set for the Tycho crater excavation scene, the first to be shot.[2]
From 1966 filming took place at MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, England. It was here that a "command post" was established to facilitate the filming of special effects scenes, described as a "huge throbbing nerve center... with much the same frenetic atmosphere as a Cape Kennedy blockhouse during the final stages of Countdown."[3]
The film was shot in Super Panavision 70 with a 65mm film negative format, and the release prints were made using the Technicolor dye transfer process.[citation needed]
Kubrick began editing the film in March of 1968 and made his final 19-minute cut just days prior to the public premiere on April 6. By this time the film had run $4.5 million over its initial $6 million budget and was 16 months late of its scheduled release.[2]
Release
The US premiere was on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC. The original release was in a 70mm projection format with a six-track stereo magnetic soundtrack. The projection aspect ratio was 2.21:1. The film was also released in the 35mmanamorphic format for general release beginning in the fall of 1968; these prints were available with either 4-track magnetic stereo or optical monaural soundtracks.
The original 70mm release was billed as a Cinerama production in theaters (such as the Indian Hills Theater in Omaha, Nebraska) which were equipped with special projection optics and a deeply curved screen. In non-Cinerama theaters the release was simply identified as a "70mm" production.
In 1980, it became the second movie to be released on VHS by MGM/CBS Home Video.
Template:Spoiler
The plot is focused on a series of mysterious alien monoliths. The first somehow teaches primitive ape-men to use tools, hunt prey, and so on. When Man's technological ability enables him to reach the Moon, researchers find another one. They discover that it is a transmitter when it suddenly sends a detectable signal towards Jupiter.
The Star Child looking at the Earth.
A spaceship, the Discovery One, is commissioned to go there, to find out who or what is on the receiving end. The crew consists of Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea), Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), an advanced, self-aware computer, HAL 9000 (voice by Douglas Rain), that runs the ship, and several scientists in suspended animation. However, the voyage goes horribly wrong when HAL starts killing off the crewmen, one by one. Finally, Bowman, the last survivor, manages to deactivate HAL and reaches Jupiter, to find a much larger, third monolith in orbit.
When he goes to investigate, he is carried away and sent 'Beyond the Infinite' (as the chapter is titled) and into a hotel-like room where Bowman's aging is shown to progress with great speed. A fourth monolith appears at his deathbed and Bowman is transformed into the "Star Child".
Template:Endspoiler
Sound and music
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. In many respects, 2001 harks back to the central power that music had in the era of silent film.
The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial records. Major feature films were (and still are) typically accompanied by elaborate film scores and/or songs written especially for them by professional composers. But although Kubrick started out by commissioning an original orchestral score, he later abandoned this, opting instead for pre-recorded tracks sourced from existing recordings, becoming one of the first major movie directors to do so, and beginning a trend that has now become commonplace.
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."[1]
File:Station.jpegSpace Station 5 - Many of the film's space scenes were given a new sense of depth and intrigue, due to the use of a classical score for the film's soundtrack.
2001 uses works by several classical composers. It features music by Aram Khachaturian (from the Gayaneh ballet suite) and famously used Johann Strauss II's best known waltz, "An der Schönen Blauen Donau " (in English, By The Beautiful Blue Danube) , during the spectacular space-station rendezvous and lunar landing sequences. 2001 is especially remembered for its use of the opening from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra (or "Thus Spake Zarathustra" in English), which has become inextricably associated with the film and its imagery and themes. The film's soundtrack also did much to introduce the modern classical composer György Ligeti to a wider public, using extracts from his Requiem, Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna and (in an altered form) Aventures.
In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the stirring score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. But 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 of 1966 MGM became concerned about 2001's 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. Unfortunately Kubrick failed to inform North that his music had not been used, and to his great dismay, North did not discover this until he saw the movie at the première. North's soundtrack has since been recorded commercially and was released shortly before his death. Similarly, Ligeti was unaware that his music was in the film until alerted by friends. He was at first unhappy about some of the music used, and threatened legal action over Kubrick's use of an electronically "treated" recording of Aventures in the "interstellar hotel" scene near the end of the film.
HAL's haunting version of the popular song "Daisy Daisy" (Daisy Bell) 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 remarkable speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr who created one of the most famous moments in the history of Bell Labs by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell", with Max Mathews providing the musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later told Kubrick to use it in the film.[4]
Dialogue
File:2001TMA1printout.jpgVisual presentation. Images such as this are used to convey facts to the audience instead of through dialogue. Floyd looks at a stack of diagrams, maps, and photographs showing the discovery of an anomaly in the moon's magnetic field in Tycho crater, dubbed TMA-1 (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly #1). The term is never spoken aloud in the movie.
Alongside its use of music, the dialogue in 2001 is another notable feature, although the relative lack of dialogue and conventional narrative cues have baffled many viewers. One of the film's most striking features is that there is no dialogue whatsoever for the first twenty minutes or the entire last segment (23 minutes) of the film—the entire narrative of these sections is carried by images, actions, sound effects, 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,[citation needed] and what remains is notable for its apparently banal nature—an announcement about the lost cashmere sweater, the awkwardly polite chit-chat between Floyd and the Russian scientists, or his comments about the sandwiches en route to the monolith site.
The exchanges between Poole and Bowman on board the Discovery are similarly flat and unemotional, and generally lack any major narrative content. Kubrick clearly intended that the subtext of these exchanges—what is not said, that is—should be the real, meaningful content. At one point during the film, HAL lip-reads a conversation between Poole and Bowman (they have secured themselves in one of the ship's pods for this conversation, wishing HAL not to hear them, his apparent failure being the object of their discussion). This further indicates the centrality of silence and 'subtextual speaking' to the film.
Narrative through ambient sound
Kubrick's unique treatment of narrative in 2001 is perhaps best exemplified by the scene in which the HAL-9000 computer murders the three hibernating astronauts while Bowman is outside the ship trying to rescue Poole. The inhuman nature of the murders is conveyed with chilling simplicity, in a scene that contains only three elements.
File:2001-terminated.jpgOther than the alarm sounds and the constant background hiss of the ship's environmental system, the entire scene is enacted with no dialogue, no music, and no physical movement of any kind.
When HAL disconnects the life support systems, we see a flashing warning sign, "COMPUTER MALFUNCTION", shown full-screen and accompanied only by the sound of a shrill alarm beep; this is intercut with static shots of the hibernating astronauts, encased in their sarcophagus-like pods, and close-up full-screen shots of the life-signs monitor of each astronaut. As the astronauts begin to die, the warning changes to "LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL" and we see the vital signs on the monitors beginning to level out. Finally, when the three sleeping astronauts are dead, there is only silence and the ominously banal flashing sign, "LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED".
"The film combines eerie contemporary music with classical waltzes and ballet suites, grunts and snarls with pneumatic hisses and synthesized beeps. One character has a rough, throaty voice but a computer talks with a soft, mellifluous tone (the classic characterization of a smooth-talking villain). Space is accurately depicted as a truly silent vacuum, but Technological Man fills this world with the sound of circulating air systems, humming computers and hissing doors. 2001 is alive with sound, and most of it is environmental. That is, most of it is ambient.
File:2001dave.JPGKeir Dullea in one of the most surreal and psychedelic sequences of scenes in science fiction film history.
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. Film criticism has existed since the earliest days of the motion picture, but 2001 holds a place unique in film history due to its openness to interpretation by audiences.
Due to an austere use of dialogue, powerful imagery, realistic special effects and a use of ambient sound far ahead of its time, Kubrick created a film that can be interpreted in many ways by different people. He encouraged people to create their own interpretations of the film, and he 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."
[5]
Scientific accuracy
File:Discovery1b.GIFSpaceship USSC Discovery XD-1 launching an EVA pod. Note the deliberately non-aerodynamic design of both craft.
In general, the film is extremely realistic: it is one of the few science-fiction films to accurately portray space (an approximate vacuum) as having no sound and to have spaceships producing no sound while traveling through space.
Much was made by MGM of this aspect of the film in its promotion, claiming in a 1968 publicity 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."[6]
Much has also been made of the reality of 2001 with regard to its accurate portrayal of weightlessness on board the Discovery. The film itself draws attention to this, with impressive tracking shots inside the rotating "wheel" which provides artificial gravity, contrasting it with the weightlessness outside the wheel such as during the repair or the HAL disconnection scenes. The scenes in the pod bay where the astronauts are walking may be explained by a 'velcro'-like coating of the floor, which explains the oddly slow pace of the walk.
The most glaring plot error, from a scientific standpoint, is the simplistic logic used to determine that the HAL 9000 computer has made an error. The scientific method of problem solving is not used - computer declarations from a relatively new system are unquestionably assumed to be entirely correct. Further, when HAL 9000 is shown to be in error the myriad other reasons (faulty cable, reporting systems, software, etc) that could have caused that error are not considered.
In addition the film does have a number of minor failures of scientific accuracy, such as:
The height of lunar mountains was overestimated, as the film was made before the lunar expeditions of the Apollo program, and because meteoric erosion was underestimated.
The gravity in Clavius base simulates that of Earth's rather than lunar gravity, although it is conceivable that the briefing takes place in a centrifuge, simulating normal gravity.
The thermal radiators on Discovery One, originally intended to be included, were eventually removed from the design because Kubrick felt they looked too much like wings.
In the EVA shots of "Discovery One," the background stars are seen to be slowly moving in relation to the ship. This is inaccurate -- the stars are too far away and the ship's speed too slow in relation to them for them to appear to move. Kubrick was aware of the inaccuracy of these shots but ignored the issue for artistic license, because if presented accurately the shots lacked visual movement, looking like still images. However, another interpretation is that the entire Discovery stack rotates end-over-end and the "camera" is rotating synchronously with Discovery against the fixed stars, as seen in the film 2010.
The dust blown up by the exhaust of the lunar shuttle is seen to billow up from the landing pad, rather than radiate out in straight lines, as would happen in the near-vacuum of the lunar surface.
A further inaccuracy seemingly ignored by many commentators is the varying phases of the Earth as seen from the Moon during the landing maneuvers of the Aries 1B moon ship (an error of continuity as well as science).
There are various places in the film where planets "magically" align, for artistic purposes, in defiance of reality.
In the sequence in which David Bowman blows the hatch on his space pod to make an unprotected entry to Discovery's airlock, there is a shot with Dave rebounding in the airlock chamber, while his space pod is still sitting just outside the airlock door. Since the pod is not fixed to Discovery, the blowing of the pod's hatch should have caused the pod to move away on the thrust of its escaping atmosphere—though rather slowly, given a rough estimation of the mass and speed of ejected air (and Bowman) in relation to the mass of the pod. This being said, it is not impossible that the ejection procedure involves automatic compensation by the thrusters of the pod, as in stationkeeping.
There is a somewhat famous, though small, technical error when Heywood Floyd is flying to the moon. Supposedly in a weightless state, he sips through a straw, and when he lets go of it, the fluid slides back into the container. This is not necessarily an error, however. Although there would be no gravitational force to pull the fluid in space, Floyd might have created a slight vacuum in the container when his lips were on the straw. This could have been sufficient to pull the liquid back into the container. Another explanation for this might be that the tips of the straws seem to be fitted with some types of small valves which, ideally, would prevent the liquid from escaping once the sipping was over. File:2001-centerfuge.jpgThe Centrifuge in Discovery One – seen here, astronaut Frank Poole is jogging around its circumference like a hamster in a cage.
Though the crew quarters in the spaceship Discovery are arranged in a rotating wheel to simulate gravity, which is often overlooked in science fiction, the wheel's small radius would require a fairly rapid RPM (five to ten RPM depending on the actual radius) to produce earth-like gravity. It is suggested that the human body becomes dizzy, nauseated and disoriented when exposed to high Coriolis forces, and few if any humans could become accustomed to high levels of rotation. In addition, the amount of gravity exerted on the human body would vary between the feet, waist and head. A better design to reduce the gradient of centripetal force would have been to rotate the entire ship, and have the crew section and the drive section swinging from the central AE-35/Antenna structure tethered by strong cables. However, this is assuming the crew quarters rotate to simulate Earth gravity. Were the purpose to simulate, say, lunar gravity, the section could rotate much more slowly.
In one scene, a flight attendant grabs the pen of a sleeping Heywood Floyd as it floats in zero gravity inside a spaceship cabin. The pen is rotating, but it is not rotating about its own center of mass; instead, it is rotating about a center that is significantly external to the pen. This happens because, in reality, the pen was mounted on a large, transparent, rotating disk from which the actress playing the flight attendant plucked it, and it was not mounted at the center of the disk. In an actual zero-gravity environment, some force would have to be acting upon the pen in order to compel it to rotate around anything other than its own center of mass.
Also, earlier in the same scene, as the flight attendent is walking back to Heywood Floyd, the camera shows a close-up shot of her feet/shoes which are labeled "Grip Shoes", suggesting that they are the only things keeping her planted to the floor. However when she is transferring her weight to her right foot, the tip of her left foot bends back, indicating that it is bearing weight.
Predictions
Accurate
Accurate predictions include:
File:2001interview.jpgOne of the more accurate predictions made in the film: small, portable, flat-screen televisions.
The ability of a computer to beat an average human player easily at a game of chess.
The use of credit cards with data stripes, for use as with ATMs. (The card Heywood Floyd inserts into the telephone is an American Express card; a close-up photo of the prop reveals that it contained a barcode rather than a magnetic strip, but the principle is the same.)
Biometric identification. The film shows voice print identification on arrival at the space station.
The basic design of the 213 ft Orion III Pan Am Orbital Clipper can be seen in the form of the smaller Orbital Sciences X-34, which is being prepared as a plane-launched test orbiter.
High levels of co-operation and friendliness between astronaut teams from both the USA and Eastern Europe.
HAL's speech, understanding and self-determining abilities exceed the actual year 2001 state of the art by orders of magnitude.
The survival of Pan Am airlines and the Bell System to the year 2000.
Disputed
The ship's computer interfaces, with numerous small screens displaying FORTRAN code and merely schematic drawings, are often seen as a failure to predict multiple "windows" and graphical user interfaces. However, as embedded systems applications often have Spartan interfaces, this claim is disputed.
Acclaim
Upon release, 2001 received mostly positive reviews, and quickly gained a cult following (its psychedelic visual imagery was quickly embraced by the counterculture). Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, believing the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale"
[7]
Yet the movie also had its detractors. Critic Pauline Kael said it was "a monumentally unimaginative movie"
[8],
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."
[9]
In 2002, the international association of the leading Internet-based cinema journalists, The Online Film Critics Society (OFCS), celebrated the first century of science fiction filmmaking with a list of the Top 100 Sci-Fi Films of the Past 100 Years. Number one on the list, is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. [3]
Sequels and offshoots
Kubrick did not envisage or plan on a sequel to 2001. Kubrick was afraid of the later exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet), so, to the dismay of MGM Studios, he ordered all prints of unused scenes, sets, props, and production blueprints destroyed — and thus lost forever.[10][11][12] However, Clarke eventually created three sequels, one of which was adapted for the screen in the 1980s.
Novels
Clarke went on to write three sequel novels. The first was subsequently adapted into a film, but there has been no serious discussion of filmmakers adapting the other two for the screen.
A sequel film, entitled 2010: The Year We Make Contact, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two 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, without Kubrick's mysticism. The film is generally considered to lack the impact of the original, although Clarke saw it as a fitting adaptation of his novel. [13]
Beginning in 1976, Marvel Comics published both a Jack Kirby-written and drawn adaptation of the film, and a Kirby-created 10-issue monthly series "expanding" on the ideas of the film and novel.
Filmed but unused scenes
Kubrick was afraid of the later exploitation and recycling of his material in other productions (as was done with the props from MGM's Forbidden Planet), so he ordered all sets, props, production blueprints, and prints of unused scenes, destroyed — and thus lost forever.[10][14]
Kubrick filmed a number of scenes which did not make the first cut. These include a schoolroom scene at the Clavius moon base in which Kubrick's own daughter appeared in the cast, and the purchase of a bush baby in a futuristic department store for Heywood Floyd's little girl who appeared in the video phone scene. Additional footage includes some redundant spacewalk material and a scene where Bowman retrieves a spare antenna part from a hexagonal corridor. MGM made publicity still from this which was used as a lobby card. But most notable was an opening scene where scientists are shown discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life. It's been rumoured that Arthur C. Clarke himself portrayed one of the scientists.[10]
Arthur C. Clarke's non-fiction memoir recounts a number of versions that did not make it to celluloid.
A notorious perfectionist like Orson Welles, Kubrick insisted on a final cut of 2001 which left about 10 minutes on the floor after the April 1968 premiere.[15]
Special effects technology (retro-reflective matting)
This film was the first major use of retro-reflective matting, used in the African scenes where the proto-humanoids discover the use of tools as weapons. Static transparency images of landscapes, taken in Africa, were projected through a partially silvered mirror, placed diagonally in front of the camera. The projected image iluminates both the costumed characters and a retro-reflective glass bead background screen. The projected image is not visible on the characters as its intensity is well below other ilumination. It is, however, reflected selectively back to the film camera by the background screen, passing through the partially silvered miror, along with the view of the characters, and is seen as a background in the complete scene. This technique produced much more realistic images than other methods available at the time but is now supplanted by more flexible computer processed blue or green-screen methods.
Due to its cultural significance, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been heavily referenced and spoofed in various forms of popular media.
DVD release
2001: A Space Odyssey has been released on Region 1DVD three times, once by MGM Home Entertainment in 1998 and twice by Warner Home Video in 1999 and 2001. The MGM release featured a booklet, the film, theatrical trailer and an interview with Arthur C. Clarke. The soundtrack was remastered in 5.1 surround sound as well. The 1999 release from Warner omitted the booklet and featured a re-release trailer. The 2001 release featured the re-release trailer and the film presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.20:1 and digitally re-mastered from the original 70* mm print, the audio was remixed in 5.1 surround sound. The interview and booklet were omitted from this release as well.
^ abGedult, Carolyn. The Production: A Calender. Reproduced in: Castle, Alison (Editor). The Stanley Kubrick Archives, Taschen, 2005. ISBN 3822822841
^Lightman, Herb A. Filming 2001: A Space Odyssey. American Cinematographer, June 1968. Excerpted in: Castle, Alison (Editor). The Stanley Kubrick Archives, Taschen, 2005. ISBN 3822822841
^
Norden, Eric. Interview: Stanley Kubrick. Playboy (September 1968). Reprinted in: Phillips, Gene D. (Editor). Stanley Kubrick: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2001. ISBN 1578062977 pp. 47-48
^MGM Studios. Facts for Editorial Reference, 1968. Reproduced in: Castle, Alison (Editor). The Stanley Kubrick Archives, Taschen, 2005. ISBN 3822822841
