Film: 2001

Film: 2001

2001 is a masterpiece of cinema that still influences film makers

nearly thirty years after it was made -- but what does it actually

mean? Therein lies the enigma. Of course, 2001 is open to many

interpretations and probably even Kubrick couldn't provide the

"correct" one.

The film is very different from the book; Kubrick reduced the original

script to its bare essentials making the actors part of the narrative

, but not telling the narrative through the script. making it a lesser

part of the hole experience. Where there is speaking it is almost

always symbolic The first words spoken signal the decay of human

language to empty phrases: "Here you are, sir. Main level, please."

The opening of 2001 is the Dawn of Man sequence which dovetails neatly

with end of Dr. Strangelove: "We'll meet again, some sunny day "

First image in the film is of a rising Sun

Obviously, Kubrick pondered deeply the astonishing reality, that idea

that man was smart enough to blow up the earth, but not smart enough

to stop that from happening (kubric)(man doesn't want to nail himself,

but he does). How could such a phenomenon occur? With such strong

symbolic events and imagery in the opening seen it is hard to see them

all as individual events, kubric uses these to tell the narrative of

the story. The Sun is not just light, but heat (a desert). Making the

Sun not necessarily good, the Sun is usually seen as positive in

relation to dark, but not in a desert. This makes the sun a negative,

with the use of water as a positive. The leopard killing the zebra Is

a key element to the opening scene representing the behaviour of man

the Zebra is a coexistence of black and white? Good an bad together

just like man, making the leopard the destruction of man kind maybe

symbolising the bomb.

To echo the directors words ,QUOTE "you're free to speculate as you

wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film" but