The OtherArena

jkc31 · Joined: 07 Aug 2006 Posts: 50

My son for his film class decided to watch 2001 and as good parents we watched along. We didn’t get it. What are we missing? That seriously was the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

Steve Yohe · Posted: Tue May 07, 2019 12:41 am Post subject:

This might help:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001:_A_Space_Odyssey

It was huge hit with the public, but very few people understood it. And the ones, who thought they did, were wrong … if they could be wrong. It was an art form in some movie & mostly in music. The artist wanted you to have your own understanding or meaning.

Actually it made money because it was a drug film & us hippies loved watching it high. Also it was the first major (A list) SF movie, and the world was hungry for it. It had the best special effects anyone had ever seen.

I've seen it 10 times in a theater & maybe 20 on TV. I don't know if I ever liked it. But it was interesting. All the Army hippies loved it, after they smoked grass in my car on the way to the theater.--Yohe

jdw · Site Admin Joined: 01 Sep 2005 Posts: 17026

Couple of quick items for Caleb:

#1 - avoid using anything from the Wiki page or easily found on the Internet

Teachers at this point all know about Wiki, and anything a student can Google search and turn up is something a teacher can and will turn up.

It's possible that he already knows that, or has been hipped to it by others (or even some of his teachers). But it's like the Cliff Notes of our generation where you want to stay the heck away from anything that the teacher would see as lifting / copying / plagiarizing work and ideas from others. Just be very careful.

#2 - if he has time, pick another movie

Given the time of the year, I get that might not be possible since the school year us just about up. But...

As Steve points out, 2001 is probably the definitive movie where no one really knows what the heck it is about. That's a positive on one level that you can throw a lot of theories at it. But it's a negative because it's just tossing stuff and seeing if it sticks. People who have done film and art and symbolism study for decades are grasping at straws over it. The thing is really a pain in the rear in that regards.

It's also not like Kubrick helped much in explaining anything, since he largely didn't talk about it. The best guide point is the book, but Kubrick wouldn't talk about that either. We have a posthumous table scrap from him on the ending, but... the movie is just a giant pain.

John