![]() All of Kubrick’s strength are on display in this tense part of the film, with composition perfectly framed, shots edited to imply precise meaning, and point of view switched to HAL at the last second, acting as cliffhanger before the film’s intermission. HAL reads their lips and realizes his survival is at stake. The two men sense trouble brewing with the increasingly unstable HAL, and they decide to deactivate him while talking privately in a pod. HAL defensively deems it “human error,” as his computer program record is flawless. When HAL alerts the men a monitor outside the ship is do to fail, they retrieve it and look it over, evaluating it as fine. In one of his best moments of foreshadowing, avid chess player Kubrick shows HAL and Dave playing a game in which HAL bests the human counterpart, setting up a real game of chess the two would soon have. The extreme-close up of HAL 9000’s eye is used to imply his thoughts through shot sequence Long takes show the flight attendants carrying items throughout the space plane in centrifugal long shots. Space crafts float through the frame with The Blue Danube hypnotizing the audience. The sequence is deliberately slow, with the mechanics of each shot and frame display a poetic feel of imagery. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) to the Space Station 5 for his mission to discover a monolith buried on the moon. With more than a half hour of the film already passed, Kubrick shows the physics of space and space travel, as in the prior scene without dialogue. With the tumble in the air of a bone, Kubrick match cuts it with a satellite orbiting Earth, an advancement in storyline millions of years, and one of the boldest match cuts in film history. What is also discovered is man’s affinity for violence and death with said tools, and, as a consequence, the urge that would re-occur and plague society its entire existence. When the presence of the monolith placed in front of them by some unknown being introduces the idea of use a bone as a tool, the man-ape takes its place on top of the food chain, and the evolutionary process to what we know now begins. The first monolith inspires the “Dawn of Man”, in perfect symmetry Next, the “Dawn of Man” segment shows “man-apes” from four million years ago, struggling to survive and evolve among other predators and ape groups. Kubrick’s precise and exact framing is established from the start and his use of classical music revolutionary. The screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey would consist of four segments, all connected together by the mysterious “monolith” which drives the human race into an evolutionary tumble. The opening segment begins with a grand shot of the Earth, Moon, and Sun in perfect alignment. Steven Spielberg said “The way the story is told is antithetical to the way we were accustomed to seeing stories.” Alfonso Cuarón called Kubrick’s work that of “someone who was very concerned with the language of cinema.” And Claire Denis spoke of the film’s unique approach to science fiction: “You knew it took place in space, but I didn’t expect that kind of strange reflection on humanity.” ![]() Its reputation and respect in the film community is well-known. With 2001, Stanley Kubrick crafted one of the most important landmark films in cinematic history. But Stanley Kubrick’s meticulous production control was about to change all of that with what would become the apex of his career–and for some, of all of cinema: the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke and adapt a film from his short story “The Sentinel.” While sci-fi films had had some popularity in the 1950s, often weaving Red Scare xenophobia into their plots and themes, a true masterpiece about space and space travel had yet to be made, and special effects technologies were still too rudimentary to adapt many stories to screen. ![]() After reading everything he could on the subject, he decided to pair with acclaimed science-fiction novelist Arthur C. Just as he had obsessed over the potential for nuclear war and self-destruction by the human race, Kubrick similarly became interested in the prospect of extra-terrestrial life. ![]()
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