New for 2013: An In-Depth Analysis of Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey

An anonymous reader writes "Long time /. member maynard has written one of the most obsessively detailed and extensive analyses of Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey seen in some time. At more than 22,000 words, it contains still images, film clips, musical score selections and copious references, including by Piers Bizony, author of Filming the Future, Nietzsche, Foucault, Freud, and film theorists like Bazin, Kracauer and Zizek. It's already gained some notoriety, having been retweeted by Nicholas Jackson, former editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Slate. Anyone who loves the film or SF in general should find this an amazing read!" I don't know whether it can topple my all-time favorite analysis of 2001, Leonard F. Wheat's Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory .

Good luck with that

[Hentes]

You have better chances finding a needle in a haystack than meaning in Space Odyssey. It's pointless to try and picture the movie for more than the pretty show it was: while it admittedly looks gorgeous even today, it didn't have much to offer beyond the special effects. Space Odyssey was the Star Wars or Avatar of the '60s, the only difference being that instead of relying on simple or shallow story and characters, it did away with those things entirely.

Re:I've started reading it,

[donaldm]

I read the book "2001: A Space Odyssey" which was written by Arthur C Clark a few years prior to watched the film when it came out. Personally I did like the film but If I had not read the book I would have found many parts of the film and particularly it's ending incomprehensible. To write a 22,000 work critique on the film to me is rather a waste since the best way of understanding the film is to read the book. Sill I do remember when the movie "Star Wars" (125 minutes long) came out there were many hours of TV time dedicated to how they did the special effects which to me was surprisingly entertaining.

Re:TL;DR

[TCM]

TL;DR, the gang sign of illiterate idiots.

Re: TL;DR

[Anonymous Coward]

Humorless condescension, the gang sign of the mouth-breathing basement dweller.

Re:'medium is the..."

[PCM2]

(honestly I haven't met anybody who doesn't fast forward through the draggiest parts to get to HAL)

Well, you haven't met me, but if you're talking about everything between the ape men and Discovery then those happen to be my favorite parts of the film. My absolute favorite scene, in fact, is when Heywood Floyd runs into the Russian scientists at the Pan Am lounge on the space station. And if you want to see why these scenes are absolutely essential to 2001, look no further than the film 2010, which completely fails to understand anything about the earlier movie and portrays the Heywood Floyd character -- and everybody else, for that matter -- as a bumbling incompetent who couldn't survive an airline flight to Greece, let alone an interstellar voyage.

Re:'medium is the..."

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Thank you. That whole Russian dialog is wonderful. They act as if they're onto something, and Heywood responds appropriately, everybody going through motions while everybody knows it's really about something else, but what? The Russians wanna know badly.

Do they suspect something more than a disease outbreak? How is Heywood's response to be interpreted depending on which view the Russians hold?

Watching 2001 is like watching Citizen Kane -- Just looking for near infinite numbers of little film tricks here and there, cool things nobody did before, or executed with such skill.

Imagone someone "remaking" this film in the modern way -- there would be nothing there. They wouldn't have had the "hamster wheel". The airlock scene wouldn't be completely silent as it should be. The moon landing would be an idiotic fast thing. There would be no curve to the space station internally. They would sweat the wrong details.

Hell, just look at 2010 where they begrudgingly addressed this with the flipping pen en route to making it about 1/3 action movie.