2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey
File:2001Style B.jpg Original film poster
Directed by	Stanley Kubrick
Written by	Novel: Arthur C. Clarke Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick Arthur C. Clarke
Produced by	Stanley Kubrick
Starring	Keir Dullea Gary Lockwood William Sylvester Daniel Richter Leonard Rossiter Margaret Tyzack Robert Beatty Sean Sullivan Douglas Rain Frank Miller Ed Bishop Alan Gifford Edwina Carroll Penny Brahms
Cinematography	Geoffrey Unsworth
Edited by	Ray Lovejoy
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1968-1998, video only from 1986-1998) Turner Entertainment (theatrical and TV, 1986-1996) Warner Bros. (theatrical and TV since 1996, video since 1999)
Release dates	April 6, 1968 (USA)
Running time	160 min. (premiere) 141 min. (general release)
Country	UK / USA
Language	English
Budget	$10,500,000

2001: A Space Odyssey is an influential 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay, written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, deals with themes of human evolution and technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life. The film is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering use of special effects, and reliance upon ambiguous yet provocative imagery and sound in place of traditional techniques of narrative cinema.

The film received a wide spectrum of positive and negative reviews upon release. Today it is widely recognized among critics as one of the greatest films ever made. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning one (for visual effects), and won the Kansas City Film Critics Circle awards for Best Director and Best Film of 1968.

In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Production

Filming of 2001 began on December 29, 1965 at Shepperton Studios in Shepperton, England. The studio was chosen for its size, big 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. From year 1966 the 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." The film was shot in Super Panavision 70 with a 65-mm film negative format, and the 35-mm general release prints were made using the Technicolor dye transfer process. Kubrick began editing the film in March of 1968 and made his final cut, taking 19 minutes out of the film, just days before the public premiere on April 6. By then, the film had run $4.5 million over its initial $6 million budget and was 16 months late of its scheduled release.

This film pioneered the use of retroreflective matting (later called front projection), which was used in the African scenes where apes learn to use tools. 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 illuminates both the costumed characters and a retroreflective glass-bead background screen. The projected image is not visible on the characters as its intensity is well below other illumination. It is, however, reflected selectively back to the film camera by the background screen, passing through the partially-silvered mirror, 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 generally supplanted by more flexible computer-processed bluescreen techniques.

Kubrick filmed a number of scenes that 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 videophone scene. Additional footage includes some redundant 'spacewalking' material and a scene where Bowman retrieves a spare antenna part from an octagonal corridor. MGM made a 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 has been rumoured that Arthur C. Clarke himself played one of the scientists.

Kubrick's final cut of the film was not made until after the April 1968 premiere, when he removed approximately 20 minutes of footage.

Synopsis

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Tribal apes approach a mysterious black monolith.

2001 opens with György Ligeti's opening cluster (which spans five octaves) from "Atmosphères", unaccompanied by any on-screen image (in a theater presentation the curtains remain drawn). The main title sequence depicts a lunar eclipse accompanied by the first movement of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra". The rest of the film can be divided into four acts — an unusual number, rarely seen in any form of narrative — each but the second preceded by on-screen title cards.

The first act of 2001, titled "The Dawn of Man", shows a tribe of prehistoric man-apes in their regular life activities: digging among sparse vegetation for sustenance, being preyed upon by a leopard and competing with another tribe over a waterhole. The primary tribe is clearly struggling to survive with minimal resources available in the dry desert. One morning, a mysterious black rectangular monolith appears near their habitation and is nervously examined by the apes.

Following this encounter, a lone man-ape is shown discovering the first tool while scavenging through a pile of bones. The man-ape picks up a bone and plays with it, finally crushing the other bones, as with a club. The man-apes are next shown eating meat — presumably that of a freshly killed tapir. The man-ape who created the tool, now leading the tribe and standing partially upright, recaptures the waterhole, clubbing an enemy ape to death with the new-found weapon. As some of his tribe mimic his actions, he howls in triumph — man has learned to kill.

In the famous match cut that follows, the victorious man-ape throws his bone weapon high into the air, at which point the film jumps forward to the future, matching the image of the tumbling bone to that of a man-made orbital satellite to begin the second act. Johann Strauss II's "The Blue Danube" waltz accompanies the following scenes of man-made objects orbiting the Earth. As the sequence develops, it depicts a Pan Am shuttle docking to an Earth-orbital space station.

Several shots of the shuttle interior show that it carries only one passenger, Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester), a leading American scientist bound for the Moon. Floyd arrives at the station (and the waltz has its final cadence). Then, after disembarking, a monotone stewardess announces the first spoken lines of the film: "Here you are, sir. Main Level, please." Floyd meets Mr. Miller of Station Security, and the two walk through the sterile station to a restaurant, but Floyd stops to make a videophone call to his daughter on Earth as Miller goes on ahead.

In the first narrative exposition, Floyd meets a group of Soviet scientists including a "good friend", Elena, and sits down for a brief chat. After Floyd reveals that he is going to the Moon base in the crater Clavius, Dr. Andrei Smyslov (Leonard Rossiter) inquires as to why nobody had been able to establish contact there and Elena mentions that the base recently denied emergency landing to one of their shuttles (a direct violation of space travel rules). Floyd feigns naïve surprise, but when Smyslov inquires about a rumor that an epidemic has broken out at the base, Floyd ominously refuses to comment on the situation, citing security restrictions.

The next scene depicts a lunar landing craft heading towards Moon Base Clavius. It lands and is lowered on an elevated platform into the base. In a meeting room here, Floyd is introduced to the base's scientists and administrators and speaks on the importance of hiding the true reason for the base's suspicious quarantine. He applauds their momentous discovery and then blithely informs the assembled staff that renewed "security oaths" are required. During a Q&A session, he states that the "cover story" of an epidemic and a base-wide communications black-out will remain in effect until decided otherwise by their superiors on Earth. He reminds them of "the potential for cultural shock and social disorientation" that their discovery presents.

The scene cuts to a subsequent moonbus ride to the excavation (accompanied by Ligeti's Lux Aeterna). Discussion between Floyd and a base administrator reveals the mystery; they have discovered an object buried on the Moon (dubbed Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1 or TMA-1 for short). Investigation of the object has revealed conclusively that it was "deliberately buried" four million years earlier. The shuttle lands at the dig site, and the scientists warily approach a monolith exactly as seen during the "Dawn of Man" sequence (to the accompaniment by the returning Kyrie from the Ligeti Requiem). Floyd reaches out and strokes the smooth surface of the object, mirroring the awe and curiosity that the man-ape exhibited millions of years earlier. They gather around it for a group photo but are interrupted when an earsplitting, continuous high-pitched tone is picked up by their radio receivers, emitted by the monolith as the sun shines down on it.

2001: A Space Odyssey — Three of the Discovery One crew are in a state of hibernation, ostensibly to conserve resources for the voyage.

The film cuts to its third act with the title card "Jupiter Mission: Eighteen Months Later", introduced with a montage accompanied by Gayane's Adagio from Aram Khatchaturian's Gayane ballet. Aboard the spaceship Discovery One are the mission pilots, astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), and three scientists "sleeping" in cryogenic hibernation. Various scenes are shown depicting mundane daily life on board the spacecraft: ship maintenance and operations, physical exercise, eating, sleeping, receiving birthday greetings from home, playing chess and even sketching. The crew is shown watching a BBC television program about themselves, in which the "sixth member" of the crew, the HAL 9000 supercomputer (Douglas Rain), is introduced and interviewed. The interview reveals that though the supercomputer is the pinnacle in artificial machine intelligence, with a remarkable, error-free performance record, it is designed to communicate and interact like a human, and even mimics (or reproduces) human emotions, and in fact the astronauts have quickly learned to treat it like another crewman, addressing it as "Hal".

During an informal conversation with Bowman, HAL detects an impending failure of the ship's communications system. Bowman exits the Discovery in an EVA pod to retrieve and replace the faulty "AE-35 unit", but upon detailed examination no fault can be found. Mission controllers back on Earth assert that HAL is "in error in predicting the fault", something unheard of for the 9000 series. HAL suggests another EVA mission to restore the part and wait for it to fail, to determine the problem. Hiding their concern, Bowman and Poole retreat to an EVA pod, ostensibly to troubleshoot a radio, but, in fact, to discuss HAL's questionable reliability in secret, finally agreeing to "disconnect" him should the AE-35 not fail, as predicted. Unbeknownst to them, HAL is spying on them, reading their lips. An intermission follows; appropriate, given the "cliffhanger" nature of this point in the movie, but nonetheless coming in the middle of the third act of the narrative proper.

File:Hal brain room605.JPG

Bowman enters HAL 9000's Central Core in the Discovery to disconnect his "higher functions." By doing this, he has performed the computer equivalent of a lobotomy, reducing the machine to an automaton monitoring the ship's functions.

After the intermission, Poole exits the Discovery in an EVA pod to put back the original AE-35 unit while Bowman watches from inside the ship. After Poole exits the pod, HAL takes control of the empty pod and accelerates it towards Poole, murdering him. Bowman sees both Poole and the pod careening away from the ship. He hurriedly exits the ship in another pod to rescue Poole (forgetting to bring his space helmet). While Bowman is outside, HAL kills the three hibernating scientists by deactivating their life support systems.

Bowman's rescue attempt turns out to be only a body retrieval mission. Upon returning, he commands HAL to "open the pod bay doors". HAL refuses, and reveals that he knows of Poole and Bowman's plan to disconnect him. HAL asserts that the mission is "too important" to allow Bowman to jeopardize it. Bowman answers that he will simply reenter the ship via an emergency air lock (a risky maneuver without a helmet; even when he has entered the ship, he will be exposed to the vacuum of space until he closes the door through a manual pull switch). HAL terminates the conversation. After jettisoning the lifeless body of Poole, Bowman opens the air lock, and jettisons the pod's hatch. The explosive decompression propels him into the airlock. Exposed to vacuum, he manages to close the airlock in the few seconds of time a human can survive.

Safely inside the ship, Bowman dons the helmet from the air lock's remaining space suit and enters HAL's "Logic Memory Center". As HAL futilely attempts to negotiate with him, Bowman proceeds to disconnect his higher brain functions, leaving the ship's systems automatic and regulatory systems running. HAL pleads for him to stop, admitting to errors but pledging he is feeling much better now. As Bowman proceeds to slowly disconnect him, HAL protests: "I'm afraid, Dave." and, "My mind is going....I can feel it". As his mind gradually fades, HAL regresses to old memories. He recites random topics such as the date he became operational (January 12, 1992), sings the song "Daisy Bell" his instructor taught him, and finally falls silent. Suddenly, a pre-recorded video briefing by Heywood Floyd plays, explaining the true nature of the mission (this is the only direct plot-related dialogue in the entire film):

Good day, gentlemen. This is a pre-recorded briefing made prior to your departure. In which for security reasons, of the highest importance, has been known onboard during the mission, only by your HAL 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter's space and the entire crew is revived, it can be told to you. 18 months ago, the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried 40 feet below the lunar surface, near the crater Tycho. Except for a single very powerful radio emission, aimed at Jupiter, the 4 million year old black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose....still a total mystery.

The final act, titled "Jupiter, and Beyond the Infinite" begins with the revelation of a third monolith in orbit around Jupiter (again accompanied by the Ligeti "Requiem"), and of the Discovery One entering the Jupiter system and later rendezvousing with the artifact. As the planet and its moons and the monolith appear to align, Bowman again exits the Discovery One in an EVA pod. Bowman, in the EVA pod, now appears to travel across vast distances of space and time through a tunnel of colorful light and sound, in what is labeled the "Star Gate sequence". Ligeti's Requiem segues to Ligeti’s colossal orchestral essay "Atmosphères".

The "Star Child" looking at the Earth.

After passing over the landscape of an alien world, Bowman arrives in a Louis XVI-style room (the alien-sounding music of Ligeti's "Adventures" is heard through an echo chamber). As he walks about the room, he is depicted suddenly ageing, first in his spacesuit, then in an ornate dressing robe, sitting down to a well appointed meal. He accidentally knocks his glass on the floor, smashing it and breaking the silence. Looking up from the broken glass, he sees himself lying on what appears to be his deathbed, at the foot of which appears a fourth and final monolith. Bowman slowly reaches out to it and is seemingly transformed into a fetus-like being enclosed in a transparent orb of light. Bowman, now in the form of a "Star Child", approaches the Earth. In the film's final, ambiguous shot, he gazes at the world through new eyes, as "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" climaxes once more. Template:Endspoiler

Release

The film's world 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 35mm anamorphic format for general release beginning in the fall of 1968; these prints were available with either 4-track magnetic stereo or optical monaural soundtracks. Because some felt the film was too long, Kubrick was forced to edit out 24 minutes from the film (including how Bowman took the AE-35 unit from the storage locker, a picture that became one of the most popular illustrations in following years).

The original 70 mm 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. MGM also published laserdisc editions (including an updated edition with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound), which were letterboxed. There was also a special edition laserdisc from The Criterion Collection in the CAV format.

It was released onto VHS again in 1999, and finally in 2001 as apart of the "Stanley Kubrick VHS and DVD Collection", featuring remastered sound and picture quality.

It has been released on Region 1 DVD three times, once by MGM Home Entertainment in 1998 and twice by Warner Home Video in 1999 and 2001, this also came in the VHS edition mentioned above. 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 in anamorphic widescreen 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. A limited edition DVD release included a booklet, 70 mm frame, and soundtrack album (including the actual tracks used in the film, previously unavailable together).

It has also been transmitted in an HDTV format on the HDnet movie network. As of 2007, no high definition video disc releases have yet been announced, however.

Reaction

Upon release, 2001 generated a polarized critical response, receiving both ecstatic praise and vehemently negative criticism. It should be noted that some critics viewed the original premiere version while some saw the general release version in which Kubrick removed 20 minutes of footage. In The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt said it was "some kind of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor....The film is hypnotically entertaining, and it is funny without once being gaggy, but it is also rather harrowing." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times opined that it was "the picture that science fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them. It is an ultimate statement of the science fiction film, an awesome realization of the spatial future....it is a milestone, a landmark for a spacemark, in the art of film." Louise Sweeney of The Christian Science Monitor felt that 2001 was "a brilliant intergalactic satire on modern technology. It's also a dazzling 160-minute tour on the Kubrick filmship through the universe out there beyond our earth." Philip French wrote that the film was "perhaps the first multi-million-dollar supercolossal movie since D.W. Griffith's Intolerance fifty years ago which can be regarded as the work of one man...Space Odyssey is important as the high-water mark of science-fiction movie making, or at least of the genre's futuristic branch." The Boston Globe's review indicated that it was "the world's most extraordinary film. Nothing like it has ever been shown in Boston before or, for that matter, anywhere...The film is as exciting as the discovery of a new dimension in life." Roger Ebert gave the film four stars in his original review, believing the film "succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale." Time provided at least seven different mini-reviews of the film in various issues in 1968, each one slightly more positive than the preceding one; in the final review dated December 27, 1968, the magazine called 2001 "an epic film about the history and future of mankind, brilliantly directed by Stanley Kubrick. The special effects are mindblowing."

But Pauline Kael said it was "a monumentally unimaginative movie", 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." Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that it was "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring." Variety's 'Robe' believed the film was a "Big, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic...A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark." Andrew Sarris called it "one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life....2001 is a disaster because it is much too abstract to make its abstract points." (Sarris soon reversed his opinion upon a second viewing of the film, and declared "2001 is indeed a major work by a major artist.") John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines....and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans....2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story."

2001 earned one Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was nominated for Best Art Direction, Best Director (Kubrick), and Original Screenplay (Kubrick, Clarke).

Top film lists

2001 is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, was number 22 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, number 40 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills, included on its 100 Years, 100 Quotes ("Open the pod bay doors, HAL."), is the only science fiction film to make the Sight and Sound poll for ten best movies, and tops the Online Film Critics Society list of "greatest science fiction films of all time." In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Other "top n" lists the film is listed on include 50 Films to See Before You Die (#6), The Village Voice 100 Best films of the 20th century (#11), The Sight and Sound Top Ten poll (#6), and Roger Ebert's Top Ten (1968) (#2). In 1995, The Vatican named it as one of the 45 best films ever made (and included it in a sub-list of the "Top Ten Art Movies" of all time.)

Academy Awards

Award	Person
Best Visual Effects	Stanley Kubrick
Nominated:
Best Original Screenplay	Stanley Kubrick Arthur C. Clarke
Best Art Direction	Anthony Masters Harry Lange Ernest Archer
Best Director	Stanley Kubrick

Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards

• Best Film of 1968
• Best Director 1968 -- Stanley Kubrick

Influences

The story of 2001 is based in part on various short stories by co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke, most directly "The Sentinel" (1951), and indirectly Clarke's running religious themes of humanity's "ascendence" best summed up in Childhood's End (1953). Kubrick collaborated with Clarke in writing the screenplay, and Clarke's novel was released shortly after the release of the film.

In early conversations, Kubrick and 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 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.'"

Interpretation

Main article: Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey

The "Star Gate" sequence.

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. Kubrick encouraged people to explore their own interpretations of the film, and 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.

Scientific accuracy

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Spaceship USS Discovery 1 launching an EVA pod. Note the deliberately non-aerodynamic design of both craft. In space aerodynamics do not matter.

Insofar as current known laws of physics are concerned, 2001 is highly realistic compared with some other science fiction films, particularly those preceding it: it is among the few to accurately present outer space as transmitting no sound. The film is also notable for its portrayal of weightlessness in spaceships and outer space. Tracking shots inside the rotating "wheel" that provides artificial gravity is contrasted in the film with the weightlessness outside the wheel during the repair and the scenes of HAL's disconnection. The scenes in the pod bay where the astronauts are walking may be explained by an earlier shot, during which a stewardess walks in Zero-G while wearing shoes labeled "Grip Shoes". This also explains the slow pace of the walk.

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.". This has proved to be wrong, although some of the film's predictions (see below) have been realized.

The film fails to be scientifically accurate in other minor details, many of which could be explained by the technical difficulty of producing a realistic effect:

• The gravitational force inside the Clavius base appears to be that of Earth rather than the Moon.
• The dust blown up by the exhaust of the lunar shuttle is seen to billow up from the landing pad instead of radiating out in straight lines, as would happen in the near-vacuum of the lunar atmosphere.
• Immediately following the previous scene a shot overlooking the test site shows the lunar surface with what appears to be Earth's moon in the background.
• The height of lunar mountains and the extent of meteoric erosion were overestimated, as the film was made before the lunar expeditions of the Apollo program.
• The Earth is shown in different phases during the landing maneuvers of the Aries 1b moon ship (an error of continuity as well as science).
• When Frank Poole is attacked by the pod and seen hurtling away from Discovery (view from left to right) on a bridge monitor he appears to be travelling from the "starboard" to "port" of the vessel - rather than "port" to "starboard" - in conflict with the earlier and later scenes.
• In the sequence where 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 (although the Pod could be designed to be stationary by applying an equal and opposite force.)
• Similarly, in the immediately previous scene, Bowman uses one of the Pod's mechanical arms to 'manually' open the hatch. This consists of the arm rotating a control in the side of the ship. In actuality, this should cause the Pod to counter-rotate, but the Pod remains stock still, even though no attitude jets or anything else to neutralize the rotation are indicated. However, a momentum wheel or unseen attitude jets cannot be ruled out.
• In the above scene, David Bowman is clearly seen holding his breath before being ejected from his capsule. Before being exposed to a vacuum, NASA states that anyone so exposed should exhale, as attempting to hold one's breath in vacuum would rupture a person's lungs. (See also vacuum.) However, although Clarke and Kubrick are wrong in detail, they do understand enough to reject the conventional wisdom "in vacuum, your blood will boil and you'll die instantly": this view was promulgated by Disney shows of the 1950s, often quoting experts like Willy Ley and Dr. Wernher von Braun. This is an aspect of barotrauma that has seen little public discussion. A great deal is known about the risks of diving and of high-altitude flight, but space travel is always discussed with the assumption that astronauts will always stay in a pressurized spaceship or spacesuit. This represents an attempt on the part of the filmmakers to faithfully depict an exposure to hard vacuum.
• When Heywood Floyd is flying to the moon (supposedly in a weightless state), he sips through a straw. But when he lets go of it, the fluid slides back into the container. This shows that the fluid inside the straw is, in fact, not weightless. However, this could be the result of a vacuum created within the container.

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The Centrifuge in Discovery One — as seen here, astronaut Frank Poole jogs around its circumference for exercise.

• 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. In the film, the centrifuge rotates every 20 seconds. It is suggested that humans become dizzy, nauseated and disoriented under significant Coriolis forces, and few if any humans could become accustomed to fast rotation. Also, the shorter the radius of rotation, the more the force of gravity exerted on the human body would vary between the feet, waist and head. A counterpoint is that the crew of the Discovery would likely be selected based on their suitability for the mission to Jupiter, as well as rigorously trained in advance for such conditions.
• 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. Of course, even in zero-G, aerodynamic pressure (an external force) would be acting on the rotating pen. The effect may also be explained by the rotation or movement of the spacecraft itself, or air currents from vents in the cabin.
• In many scenes of the film, the stars appear to be moving past the various spaceships while the camera keeps pace with the ship. This would not be possible unless the ships were going extremely fast, or they were turning (which is clearly not the case in some scenes). This was known by Kubrick but shown anyway or the audience would not have understood that the ships were, in fact, moving.

Imagining the future

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Small, portable, flat-screen televisions, as well as microwave dinners, were indeed available in the year 2001.

The film shows an imagined version of the year 2001. Some of what is seen in the film has come to pass:

• Flat-screen computer monitors (simulated by rear projection in the film).
• Small, portable, flat-screen television sets.
• Television screens with a wide aspect ratio.
• Glass cockpits in spacecraft.
• The proliferation of TV stations (the BBC's channels numbering at least 12).
• Telephone numbers with more digits than in the 1960s. This is a function of having access to much of the human race, rather than one city or country.
• The endurance of corporations like IBM, Aeroflot, and Hilton Hotels to the year 2001.
• The use of credit cards with data stripes. (The card Heywood Floyd inserts into the telephone is of American Express; 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 shape of the Orion III Pan Am Orbital Clipper was echoed in the X-34, a prototype craft that underwent towed flight tests from 1999 to 2001.
• Bowman adjusts a control on his helmet when he is outside during his EVA that darkens his visor. Today's LCD technology can facilitate the electronic darkening of a normally transparent surface.

File:2001 film Clavius surveyors.jpg

Establishing a permanent colony on the moon is not yet a reality.

However, many things shown in the film differed from the real-life year 2001:

• Good-quality, high-resolution videophones are common.
• Space travel is commonplace by 2000. In the film:
  • At least two colonies have been established on the moon.
  • Manned missions to Jupiter are feasible.
  • Hotels in orbit, part of a revolving space station. However, Hilton International has launched a project to build a hotel in orbit, called the Space Islands Project.
  • Commercial space flight is routine.
• Technology is available to put humans into long-term suspended animation.
• A computer artificial intelligence exhibiting sentience, self-motivation, and independent judgment.
• The existence of Pan American Airlines (on any significant scale), the unitary Bell System, and ubiquitous Howard Johnson's restaurants.
• The existence of the Soviet Union.
• Smaller digital cameras are now available than the gun-shaped camera used earlier in the film.

Soundtrack

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 this respect, 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 recordings. Major feature films were (and still are) typically accompanied by elaborate film scores and/or songs written especially for them by professional composers. Although Kubrick started out by commissioning an original orchestral score from composer Alex North, 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.

2001 uses works by several classical composers. It features music by Aram Khachaturian (Gayane's Adagio from the Gayaneh ballet suite) and famously used Johann Strauss II's best known waltz, An der schönen blauen Donau (in English, On The Beautiful Blue Danube), during the 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 Spoke 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 (the Kyrie), Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna and (in an altered form) Aventures (though without his permission).

In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score for 2001 from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the stirring score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. However, 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. What survives of North's soundtrack recordings has been released as a "limited edition" CD from Intrada Records. The original North theme music (resembling "Also Sprach Zarathrustra" and later recycled as the title theme to The Shoes of the Fisherman, another MGM film also scored by North) made its public premiere in early 1993 on a Telarc recording by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra for the compilation CD Hollywood's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. All the music North originally wrote was recorded commercially by North's friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and was released on Varese Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first theme release but before North's 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 Bell" (referred to by HAL as "Daisy" in the film) 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.

Dialogue

Alongside its use of music, the dialogue in 2001 is another notable feature, although the relative lack of dialogue and conventional narrative cues has baffled many viewers. One of the film's most striking features is that there is no dialogue whatsoever for the entirety of the first and last acts of the film—the entire narrative of these sections, totalling almost 45 minutes of the entire film 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, and what remains is notable for its apparently banal nature—an announcement about a sweater being found (though this is likely a "winking reference" to the sweater lost in Kubrick's Lolita), 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. Equally, it represents the emotionless stereotype of the astronaut as technological Man. 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

Template:Spoiler 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.jpg

Other 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 the life-signs monitor 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". Template:Endspoiler 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 mankind 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.

"The legacy of 2001's sound design is clear in later films such as George Lucas's THX 1138, Carroll Ballard's Never Cry Wolf, David Lynch's Eraserhead, Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and Steven Soderbergh's Solaris. Filmmakers became far more conscious of the revolutionary possibilities that effective sound editing offered. Noise, quiet, eclectic effects, all contribute to a scene's power, but treating a film as an extended sonic performance, as well as visual, expanded the art." – D. B. Spalding

Spoofs and references

Main article: List of cultural references to 2001: A Space Odyssey

Due to its cultural significance, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been heavily referenced and spoofed in various forms of popular media.

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, these materials were lost.

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.

• 2010: Odyssey Two (1982)
• 2061: Odyssey Three (1987)
• 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)

The sequel film, titled 2010: The Year We Make Contact, was based on Clarke's 1982 novel 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 with more dialogue, without Kubrick's religious mysticism. Clarke saw it as a fitting adaptation of his novel.

In 3001: The Final Odyssey, we find out that Poole somehow survived HAL's attack, entered a comatose state, and started drifting in an orbit that would take him out of the solar system until 3001, when he was picked up by a ship that was looking for frozen water near the edge of the solar system.

A Time Odyssey series are not direct sequels. They are a retelling of the story "Aliens affect human development" except the monolith has been replaced by a spherical eye.

Beginning in 1976, Marvel Comics published both a Jack Kirby-written and drawn comic adaptation of the film and a Kirby-created 10-issue monthly series 'expanding' on the ideas of the film and novel.

Outtakes

Some unused shots were eventually used in The Beatles TV special Magical Mystery Tour: In the Flying sequence, the music is accompanied by colour-altered images of landscape in Iceland taken from an aeroplane.

Further reading

• Agel, Jerome (1970). The Making of Kubrick's 2001. Signet. ISBN 0-451-07139-5.

• Bizony, Piers (2001). 2001 Filming the Future. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. ISBN 1-85410-706-2.

• Castle, Alison (ed.), ed. (2005). "Part 2: The Creative Process / 2001: A Space Odyssey". The Stanley Kubrick Archives. New York: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-2284-1. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)

• Chion, Michel (2001). Kubrick's Cinema Odyssey. translated by Claudia Gorbman. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 0-85170-840-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |other= ignored (|others= suggested) (help)

• Clarke, Arthur C. (1972). The Lost Worlds of 2001. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. ISBN 0-283-97903-8.

• Kolker, Robert (ed.), ed. (2006). Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517453-4. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)

• Richter, Daniel (2002). Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary of 2001: A Space Odyssey. foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-1073-X.

• Schwam, Stephanie (ed.), ed. (2000). The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75528-4. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |other= ignored (|others= suggested) (help)

• Wheat, Leonard F. (2000). Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-3796-X.

See also

• Space colonization in popular culture
• Space exploration
• Douglas Trumbull, a visual effects pioneer who contributed to the Stargate sequences in 2001
• Slit-scan photography, an animated effect adapted for 2001 by Douglas Trumbull.

External links

• 2001: A Space Odyssey at IMDb
• 2001: A Space Odyssey at AllMovie
• 2001: A Space Odyssey at Rotten Tomatoes
• Template:Filmsite
• 2001: A Space Odyssey Internet Resource Archive
• The 2001: A Space Odyssey Collectibles Exhibit
• The Kubrick Site including many works on 2001