2001: A Space Odyssey at 50

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey landed in theaters 50 years ago today. I am old enough that I saw it first-run in the theater. I probably have seen again, at least in parts, dozens of time in the decades since. But I still remember the wonder of that first encounter.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of what has become a film and cultural touchstone, I decided to watch the whole thing again with a critical eye.

The film starts with the “Overture”—just that word on a title card, white letters on a black background, with Györgi Ligeti‘s micropolyphonic “Atmospheres” playing for a couple minutes. Overtures are a holdover from operas and plays, where they provide an opportunity for the audience to get settled before the real show starts. Of course, movie theater owners now want everyone in their seats early (having already dropped some cash at the concession stand) to watch the trailers and  the commercials that play before the trailers. (2001 also has a title card for an “Intermission” an hour and half in, and another for the “Exit Music” at the end, each accompanied by a couple more minutes of classical music.)

After a glimpse of a stylized MGM logo, we see the moon, or rather part of it, with Richard Strauss’ “Thus Sprach Zarathustra” playing in the background.  Our viewpoint shifts to reveal the Earth beyond.  As the moon moves out of view, the sun appears over the edge of the Earth.  This could be the view experienced by aliens leaving the surface moon, after putting a little something there for us to find, four million years later. This stunning sequence serves as background for the only credits shown at the start: “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Presents… A Stanley Kubrick Production… 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Next, the words “The Dawn of Man” are superimposed over beautifully composed shots of a sunrise and the landscape of Namibia, Africa, which takes on an almost Martian tonal quality in early dawn light.  We see early hominids eat, literally nit-pick one another, fight over resources, and huddle in the dark as predators circle nearby. This is a narrative style that defines the film: Kubrick spends considerable time, and little or no dialog, showing a slice of life—first of the hominids, later of space flight.

When the hominids wake the next morning, they find a featureless black monolith outside the shelter where they slept. They circle it, fearful at first, then fascinated, and finally touch it. After this contact, one of the hominids is inspired (to the tune of “Thus Sprach Zarathustra”) to use a thigh bone as a club, first on a skull, then on a tapir, and finally on another of his own species. He throws the bone into the air where Kubrick makes his famous cut to a spaceship in orbit, long and thin like the bone.

A commercial spaceship and space station dance between the Earth and the Moon to “Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss II. Kubrick did commission an original score, but decided to use prerecorded classical and orchestral music instead. (The composer, Alex North, did not find out about the switch until he saw the finished film.) The use of music is still striking, all these years later.

Kubrick strives to make his depiction of space travel realistic through a combination of excellent visual effects (which won the film an Oscar in that category, and holds up remarkably well) and intricate details, lavishing closeups on a Parker pen floating in the weightlessness of space, and on the Velcro-soled shoes that keep the flight attendants from floating around too. Some of those details place the film squarely into “alternate universe” territory—the ship features a prominent logo for Pan Am, which wasn’t even flying planes on Earth after 1991, much less flying into space by 2001.

The purpose of this flight is to bring one Dr. Heywood Floyd from Earth to another monolith, discovered buried on the Moon. He arrives just as the alien object, exposed to the sun for the first time in four million years, sends a signal to Jupiter.

The story follows said signal into the next section, “Jupiter Mission 18 Months Later,” aboard the ship Discovery One, bound for Jupiter. Kubrick again piles on the details of spaceflight, building a plausible sense of verisimilitude. Drs. Frank Poole and David Bowman, the only crew members not in suspended animation, are shown jogging, getting a tan, watching their tablets as they eat, and playing chess with HAL, the ship’s artificial intelligence.

Bowman and Poole grow concerned when the supposedly infallible HAL 9000 makes a mistake. They plan to disconnect HAL’s higher functions, but HAL strikes back, concluding he is essential for the mission’s success. In the end, only Bowman survives to reach the monolith orbiting Jupiter. The preceding sentence plays out across more than an hour of screen time, which tells you something about Kubrick’s.. let’s say methodical pacing.

This brings us to the finale, “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.” Bowman approaches the monolith orbiting Jupiter in an EVA pod and is drawn into a star gate. It is impossible to describe the journey that follows; it just has to be experienced. Created before the advent of computer graphics, it was developed using slit-scan photography of various images, colored filters over aerial photography, dyes swirling in tanks of fluid, and other techniques that produce quite a light show. Ligeti‘s “Atmospheres” provides fitting background music. At the end of the trip, Bowman finds himself in what appears to be a luxury hotel suite, where he watches himself age and die. The film ends with Bowman, reborn as the Star Child—a fetus in utero, floating in space above the Earth.

So what does it all mean? The film can—and has—been interpreted many different ways. It is never even completely clear whether 2001 is the year they find the monolith on the moon, or when they arrive at Jupiter 18 months later. The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written concurrently by Arthur C. Clarke, who collaborated with Kubrick on the film’s screenplay, is much more explicit about the monolith and its meaning. If you still have questions, Clarke also wrote three more books in what became a series—2010: Odyssey Two, 2061: Odyssey Three, and 3001: The Final Odyssey.

Is 2001 still worth watching? Definitely. It was a groundbreaking science fiction film, both in special effects and the depth and subtlety of its concepts. But don’t expect a lot of action. Even Bowman’s confrontation with HAL, the homicidal ship’s computer, happens at a slow walk. It’s a stunning visual experience, with great music, and leaves you thinking, if not your adrenaline flowing. And as little dialog as there is, it still gave us some of the most iconic lines of any SF film: “Open the pod bay doors, Hal.” “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.” “My God, it’s full of stars.” (That last one is only in the novel, but I think we can all agree it should be in the movie.)

One final thought: Clarke and Kubrick seem somewhat obsessed with food. We see the hominids eating (plants before the monolith, fresh meat after). In the weightless flight to the space station, Floyd and crew suck their meals through a straw. Going from the moon base to the monolith site, Floyd gets a chicken sandwich and drinks coffee. On the Discovery One, Bowman and Poole eat food paste with a spork (a step up from a straw, but why did they need tines at all if they are eating paste?). After his trip through the Star Gate, Bowman is served a last meal via cosmic room service. Either Kubrick and Clarke should have had more snacks on hand while writing, or they were ingesting something that triggered their appetites. Goodness knows the latter is true of many of the film’s viewers over the decades.

What do you think of 2001: A Space Odyssey today?