Film Review: 2001 a space odyssey

Fig.1 2001 a space odyssey

2001 a space odyssey(1968) is a sic-fi film which was produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

The film comes across as a film about evolution, and alien like technology. During the beginning of the film apes find a mysterious black sculpture which seems to make the apes evolve into a more human like persona.

Here is a review by Rob Humanick (2007) talking about the opening scene "The first step toward the stars comes when mankind, presented as the aforementioned ape-men roaming the Earth millions of years ago, realizes that a bone needn't be just a bone. This first (and simplest) tool gives way to an orbiting spacecraft."

The film gives off and makes the mind think what really is going on in the film , some interesting scenes in the film was where the apes had now evolved and learned to fight, the un evolved apes come to share the water hole in which all of of the apes a residing, this scene then carries on into the evolved apes killing an undeveloped ape, as if to show that the newly evolved is killing off the old.

 The ape  scene is very similar to a scene further on in the film. This is where the film is set in the space age. In this stage of the film men had found the mysterious marker and evolved them into creating the Hal 9000, this could be seen as the next evolution stage; where machinery is the new life.

During the movie Hal 9000 starts to kill off the humans, as if to show just like the ape scene, the more evolved creation is trying to kill off the old, just like a cycle of life, the old must be smothered for the new to strive.

Fig.2 Film Still

when the film is at the point in where the antagonist is entering Jupiter everything becomes very strange and obscure, all that is shown is a variety of shapes and colours and strange music is played, as if this is a 4th dimension, the space outside of the 3rd dimension of reality, where time has a mind of its own and evolution is created.

Tim Durks : "The only survivor of the mission - a human specimen, it appears that he is in an observation chamber or tank, scrutinized by alien, extra-terrestrial superior intelligences or beings - symbolized by the black monolithic slabs - who decide that he should be reborn. The film's many reproductive allusions: procreation, gestation, birthing, and nursing, are further visualized throughout this final sequence. The alien beings assist him in making a basic symbiotic change in consciousness toward a more completely civilized human being, with a universal knowledge of existence. The end result of the space odyssey is not a greater and more infallible machine, but a greater, more fully-realized being produced in a second childhood."

near the end of the film there is a variety of scenes were the antagonist is evolving, time jumps as if the room is a testing room for a new type of evolution, subjects are studied and work is calculated to eventually get the next stage of the human evolution.

Fig.3 Interior shot of space ship/film still

At the very end there is the newly evolved Dan (The antagonist) who seems to be a new style of life, a way that perhaps the newly evolved has been sent back to get rid of the previous evolved and start a new, or maybe, it is there to guide the un-evolved to further their development.


This is a quote explaining the ending of 2001 a space odyssey, Roger Ebert(1997) "The film did not provide the clear narrative and easy entertainment cues the audience expected. The closing sequences, with the astronaut inexplicably finding himself in a bedroom somewhere beyond Jupiter, were baffling. The overnight Hollywood judgment was that Kubrick had become derailed, that in his obsession with effects and set pieces, he had failed to make a movie.

What he had actually done was make a philosophical statement about man's place in the universe, using images as those before him had used words, music or prayer. And he had made it in a way that invited us to contemplate it -- not to experience it vicariously as entertainment, as we might in a good conventional science-fiction film, but to stand outside it as a philosopher might, and think about it."

Bibliography:


Quotes:

Rob Humanick (2007) : http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/2001-a-space-odyssey

Tim Durks: http://www.filmsite.org/twot.html

Roger Ebert (1997) : http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-2001-a-space-odyssey-1968



Images:

fig. 1 - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/

fig. 2 - http://www.bfi.org.uk/whats-on/bfi-film-releases/2001-space-odyssey

fig. 3 - http://whatculture.com/film/what-does-the-ending-of-2001-a-space-odyssey-really-mean.php