2001: A Space Odyssey....an Oddity??

I've just watched this film and didn't really get it!

Perhaps it's down to individual interpretation, but what was the point of it?

This very question was asked by my high school teacher some thirty years ago. There is no one correct answer.

Which part did you not understand?

well, i think it talks about life... and evolution

it contains the largest ummm how do you call that... let's say time-gap between 2 scenes (the bone spinning in the air becomes a spaceship floating in space) - edit: ok, it's called a fast-forward in cinema-language

i should watch it again

from Wikipedia:

Stanley 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."

In a subsequent discussion of the film with Joseph Gelmis, Kubrick said his main aim was to avoid "intellectual verbalization" and reach "the viewer's subconscious." However, he said he did not deliberately strive for ambiguity - it was simply an inevitable outcome of making the film nonverbal, though he acknowledged this ambiguity was an invaluable asset to the film. He was willing then to give a fairly straightforward explanation of the plot on what he called the "simplest level", but unwilling to discuss the metaphysical interpretation of the film which he felt should be left up to the individual viewer.

Stanley Kubrick is one of my favourite movie directors.

He was also an avid chess player!

thank you for sharing such a deep thought with us

:rolleyes:

They must be paying kay to make comments, otherwise I can't understand his persona. Gotta be tough, I guess.

It's about human evolution.  The basic concept was an idea that was fairly popular in the 20th century that human's were on the cusp of an evolutionary leap that be equivalent the the progression from ape to man.  It's the Nietzschean concept of the Superman, hence the use of Strauss's music from Also Sprach Zarathustra - a tone poem on Nietzsche's text.

Personally I think that these forums are proof enough that this idea is completely absurd.

It isn't just the forums; one can observe the devolution into apes happening in places where apemen destroy works of art two and a half thousand years old.

I read the book in 1968. Arthur C. Clarke penned a few sequels as well. Essentially, the "Monolith" was some kind of alien intelligence which showed a dying tribe of Ape Men how to survive in the world and supplant a rival tribe. Saturn was the planet they flew to, Jupiter in the movie. The novel 2010 returns to the scene at Jupiter. The movie adaptation of 2010 omits the key point. Life was evolving on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and the intelligence of the Monolith turned Jupiter into a new Star so it could help Europa sustain life. Humans were told to stay out, not to interfere with Europa. Oh yeah, HAL is back in 2010. Can't remember much about the other sequels but in one, they land a spaceship on a comet. Clarke was quite the visionary...humans sent a probe recently to do just that, and plenty of speculation about life on Europa has arisen since the Voyager fly-bys of the 1980s.

Ah, I see now.....I had no idea what to expect when I started watching it. Just thought it was an ordinary movie like most others with a start, middle & finish, good guys ,bad guys etc

Now that I know it needs thinking about, I'll watch it again!

Thanks for your comments....most of them anyway!

I never got what the room he ends up in in the end is supposed to be. Im thinking maybe the old dude in the room is God? And then God turns the atrnaut guy into a baby, which maybe means that god restores innocence after the fall, which happened in the first scene when they invented stone axes or bone clubs whatever tech it was.

Interesting:)

I was wondering when trysts will show up.

well, 7 minutes ago

Great topic:)

Yes, but even though Clarke was brilliant and the story is "his" by right of authorship, 2010 and especially the subsequent sequals were not to the same standard as the first book.  Instead of being arguably (and probably) about attaining a higher consciousness from animal beings, to what we are now, to something beyond what we are now, it became more a simple alien contact thing...and didn't it end with humans using computer viruses as a weapon (a bit silly, like the aliens forgot to renew Kaspersky--of course I could be misremembering).

Hal 2000 the newest technology trys to take over. It killed several people.

"I cannot allow that."

Hal is somewhere floating in space.

                     So we wait for Number 2.

2nd key scene is the long multi coloured abstract (hallucinations?)- a second transition. What to? Don't forget this was the60's!