2001: A Space Odyssey: Summary and Analysis of the Film

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick.

It is inspired by The sentinel, short story by the writer and screenwriter of the film Arthur C. Clarke.

The film is a "journey" through different periods of human history, from its most primitive origin to the proliferation of artificial intelligence.

At the time, 2001: A Space Odyssey it broke all genre schemes and became a cultural phenomenon.

However, this fascinating film continues to generate conflicting opinions; While for some it is one of the peaks in the history of cinema, others consider it a slow and overrated work. Join us in the following lines to discover why.

Summary of the movie

The film can be divided into four parts:

1. the dawn of man,
2. the lunar journey,
3. mission to jupiter and
4. beyond Infinity.

Attention, from now on there may be spoilers!

1. Dawn of man

At the dawn of the hominid, all species coexisted peacefully. Then another group of hominids appears that walk upright and begin to communicate in order to scare them away.

One day, upon waking up, apes discover a black, rectangular monolith. Touching it takes them to a state of superior intelligence compared to other species.

Little by little the apes discover how to use a bone as a weapon of attack and control. One of the primates throws a bone into the air, as a symbol of victory and conquest.

2. The lunar journey

The bone thrown by the primate causes an ellipsis of more than four million years and gives way to a spacecraft traveling through space in 1999.

Inside the ship travels scientist Heywood Floyd, who has fallen asleep while watching a movie.

Then the ship is embedded in a circular satellite. Inside is a space station called Orbiter Hilton, which have artificial gravity. Where he passes a control and stays for a few hours before making his trip to the moon. There he has a conversation with Soviet scientists and his daughter via videoconference from Earth.

After this stop, Heywood continues his space journey to the moon with the mission of uncovering the mystery behind a black monolith found there. The images are interspersed to the sound of the musical theme The blue Danube.

When they land, Floyd walks up to the monolith and touches it, as hominids did in the past. At sunrise and receiving sunlight, the monolith emits a deafening acoustic signal.

3. Mission to Jupiter

In 2001, a skeleton-shaped spacecraft named Discovery 1 heads towards Jupiter. A total of five crew members are in command of this mission, including David Bowman and Frank Poole.

The ship is equipped with the best technology, a state-of-the-art computer, the HAL 9000, which has eyes and ears, allowing it to communicate with humans.

The objective of the crew is to reach Jupiter. But, shortly before reaching his goal, the computer asks David if he has no doubts about the mission.

Then HAL 9000 warns about a failure in the system that prevents communication with the Earth. Thus, David leaves the ship to try to repair the error.

Two crew members, Frank and Bowman plan to disconnect the computer, but it reads their lips and finds out everything. As revenge HAL 9000 causes the death of some crew members.

Finally, David manages to disconnect HAL and listens to a recording of Dr. Floyd in which he indicates what its true mission is: to investigate the signal received by the TMA-1 monolith in 1999 since Jupiter.

4. Jupiter and beyond infinity

When the ship is reaching Jupiter, a black monolith appears floating in space. David Bowman exits the ship to investigate it.

The monolith is like a door and through it, the protagonist experiences with his eyes a journey, a visual spectacle, among nebulae and bright stars.

After this, everything returns to normal and David appears in a white room, in which the checkered floor and green armchairs stand out.

Meanwhile, he goes around the place to investigate it and comes to a bathroom, where a mirror reveals his wrinkled physical appearance.

Finally, he accidentally drops a glass of wine on the ground. Then he appears aged-looking on a bed and a monolith emerges. Bowman points his finger at him and suddenly he turns into a fetus floating through the universe.

Film analysis

As the title indicates 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film is an initiatory journey, but not just any, rather it is the most impressive journey in the history of cinema.

Throughout history, innumerable questions related to humanity and the meaning of life have arisen. With the origin of man, his evolution, his relationship with his environment and with technology.

And, around them, incalculable answers that lurk and question theories that were taken for granted.

This film is not intended to offer absolute truths about the evolution of man but, rather, wants to make us reflect and take us away from that state of stillness that makes us “give everything for course ”.

From the origin of man to artificial intelligence

It is clear that Kubrick wanted to do something different with this film and established a game with the viewer. A commitment to viewing with all active senses throughout the entire thickness of the film. But above all, he wanted the public to reflect and draw their own conclusions.

Thus, different interpretations related to the evolution of man, the technological revolution and artificial intelligence can be extracted from this film.

What does the black monolith mean?

What is the cause of the evolution of the human being from the primate? Is there a superior intelligence that has made the species evolve?

Throughout the film, an abstract and mysterious entity appears on different occasions, a rectangular black object, that causes the human being to go from being a primate to a controlling predator and superior to the rest of the species with which he dwells.

There are many theories related to the presence of this monolith but, the only thing that is known with certainty is that, Each time it appears on the scene, it conditions the course of events and, therefore, the development of the humanity.

With this element the Darwinian and creationist theories about the species are put into question. Could it be that Kubrick wanted to send a critical message towards these hypotheses?

The sentimentality of artificial intelligence

HAL 9000 is a fictional "supercomputer" but, more than that, it is a character.

In 1968 computers were a mystery to man. Then, the fiction could imagine a device with a thought similar to that of the human being.

At that time, endowing machines with feelings was something futuristic and, at least, fictional. However, today, man still insisted on his purpose to create machines endowed with emotions.

In a present in which the continuous dehumanization of man prevails, we wish to humanize machines. But are there artificial emotions and feelings?

If in the film we are able to empathize with the HAL 9000 computer, will we ever empathize with “emotional robots”?

Breakdown of the traditional narrative structure

The narrative structure of the film breaks with the previously established convention. It is precisely the traditional non-narrative that makes this film original.

2001: A Space Odyssey is an example of breaking the cinematographic rules of cinema hollywood. And the fact is that the film does not go through the three traditional acts: approach, middle and end.

Nor does it follow a story that revolves around a main character who tries to solve his problems and has to face his antagonist, nor is there a clear relationship between causes and effects.

This ambiguity and the scarcity of dialogues make the viewer pay attention to each of the images and extract their own interpretations of it.

The special effects revolution

I felt that it was necessary to make this movie in such a way that each special effects scene was completely compelling, something that had never been achieved in a movie before.

With these words Kubrick showed that he took care of even the smallest detail of this film.

The science fiction films filmed up to that date may have been sinful because of the lack of a fundamental element in this genre: verisimilitude.

And it is that, until then, the films related to fantasy worlds presented some “futuristic” visual effects but nothing credible.

2001: A Space Odyssey It was the product of a meticulous work by the director who, during the five years of filming, took care to make credible each of the images that make up the film. Not just in its release year, but more than fifty years later, the 2001 spaceships can still be compelling.

Thus, of this feature film, one cannot fail to mention memorable filming sets such as, for example, that of the Discovery ship. Neither can its special effects be put aside.

Thanks to a real twelve meter diameter centrifuge, Kubrick was able to produce effects like this one in which it simulates that one of the astronauts is "jogging" and, on its way, makes a 360 turn degrees.

This other remarkable sequence in which the moon, the Earth and the sun align to the rhythm of the composition of Richard Strauss Thus speak Zarathustra.

Classic style soundtrack

Far from the preference for musical compositions expressly for the film, Kubrick decided to use pre-existing music. Thus, he counted on the works of authors such as György Ligenti, Richard Strauss or Khatchaturian.

The film has a predominant visual character, which makes the function of musical pieces composed during the 19th and 20th centuries play a exclusive role, therefore, they not only enrich the film but also help to free the imagination to assimilate that emotional journey of 140 minutes of duration.

By way of introduction and on a black frame, the film starts with Atmospheres by György Ligenti, a piece of music that increases in intensity and awakens an atmosphere of concern.

Then appears Thus spoke Zarathustra by Richard Strauss who comes to present the alignment between the moon, the sun and the Earth.

This theme appears more often throughout the film. In the previous sequence, in particular, it comes to represent the origin of our species.

But, without a doubt, one of the most striking moments on a musical level is the appearance of the waltz TheBlue Danube by Johann Strauss.

The human being has been able to reach space thanks to technology. This piece symbolizes the evolution of the species and its transformation thanks to technological advancement.

In tune with the music, the ships "dance" through space, which is a perfect juxtaposition between image and sound.

Sociopolitical context: the proliferation of social movements

In the year the film was released, the world was witnessing different revolutionary events that would mark a before and after in history.

In 1968 the “Prague spring” took place, a movement of political liberalization and protest that He tried to end communism and whose decline came that same year with the Soviet invasion in the city of Prague

This same year in France what is known as "May 1968" occurred, attending a series of protests that cradled different causes: environmentalism, sexual freedom, equal education or the feminism.

On the other side of the Atlantic, events such as the death of Martin Luther King in April and, in October, the so-called “1968 movement in Mexico” that led to the Tlatelolco massacre took place.

These facts make us raise our conscience about the most cruel and dehumanized side of the human being.

The film offers us a reflection on the evolution of man, but also on our primitive origin. That animal instinct that awakens in us the most absolute cruelty and makes us wonder if there has really been progress in that sense.

Space travel, an unattainable dream?

The admiration of man towards the terrestrial satellite has made one of his dreams have been to want to reach it.

Already in the 2nd century AD. C., Luciano de Samosata imagined in his novel The true story a space trip, becoming this in the “first work of science fiction”.

Centuries later, man continued to dream of space travel. So did Jules Verne with his novels From the Earth to the moon Y Around the moon, both published during the second half of the 19th century.

In the seventh art, the French illusionist and filmmaker George Méliès tried to make this wish come true and turned it into images, giving rise to one of the great milestones in the history of cinema: Trip to the moon. This would be the first example of science fiction cinema.

The reality is that in 1968 he had not yet achieved that dream, nor today according to the most skeptical thinkers. However, the mission to the moon by Apollo 11 in 1969 will remain for posterity as the first time that man stepped on the lunar surface.

A year earlier, Kubrick had devised a very similar path, making cinema an emissary of the fantastic and the unknown. He made available to the viewer a more romantic vision of the cinematographic medium, a cinema in which the most beautiful is found in the images.

Stanley kubrick

Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) was an American director and photographer. He began his career as a photographer for Look magazine when he was seventeen years old.

In 1951 he was introduced to the world of cinema when he made his first short film and two years later he made his first feature film.

His recognition as a director came years later with the premiere of Paths of Glory (1957).

Although his filmography was brief, Kubrick stood out as an original filmmaker and nothing in his films is accidental, each shot is filmed with care and meticulousness.

Kubrick was a director dissatisfied with the results and always tried to seek perfection.

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