MOTION PICTURE ANALYSIS WORKSHEET

Student Stefania Giannusa Class III C

1. FEATURES OF THE FILM

1.1 Complete the following informative table, in order to precise the main features of the film you
have just seen.

Features Information
Title of film 2001: a space Odyssey
Film director Stanley Kubrick
Film genre/type of film Adventure; Sci-fi
Year 1968
Main actors/cast Keir Dullea ... Dr. Dave Bowman
Gary Lockwood ... Dr. Frank Poole
William Sylvester ... Dr. Heywood R. Floyd
Daniel Richter ... Moon-Watcher
Leonard Rossiter ... Dr. Andrei Smyslov
Margaret Tyzack ... Elena
Robert Beatty ... Dr. Ralph Halvorsen
Sean Sullivan ... Dr. Bill Michaels
Douglas Rain ... HAL 9000 (voice)
Frank Miller ... Mission controller (voice)
Bill Weston ... Astronaut
Ed Bishop ... Aries-1B Lunar shuttle captain (as Edward Bishop)
Glenn Beck ... Astronaut
Alan Gifford ... Poole's father
Ann Gillis ... Poole's mother
Screenplay Stanley Kubrick; Arthur C. Clarke
Director of Photography Geoffrey Unsworth
Production/film length Produced by Stanley Kubrick
Runtime 141 min | 160 min (premiere cut)
Awards Academy Awards:
Award Person :
∼ Best Visual Effects Stanley Kubrick
Nominated:
∼ Best Original Screenplay Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke
∼ Best Art Direction Anthony Masters, Harry Lange, Ernest Archer

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 ∼ Best Director Stanley Kubrick
Won:
BAFTA Awards:
∼ Best Art Direction (Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer)
∼ Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth)
∼ Best Sound Track (Winston Ryder)
Cinema Writers Circle, Spain:
∼ Best Foreign Film
David di Donatello Awards, Italy:
∼ Best Foreign Production (Stanley Kubrick)
Hugo Awards:
∼ Best Dramatic Presentation
Kansas City Film Critics:
∼ Best Director (Stanley Kubrick)
∼ Best Picture
Laurel Awards:
∼ Best Road Show
Nominated:
BAFTA Awards:
∼ Best Film (Stanley Kubrick)
∼ UN Award (Stanley Kubrick)
Directors Guild of America (DGA):
∼ Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (Stanley
Kubrick)

1.2 Is the film-script original or has it been adapted from a literary text such as a play or a novel?

Shortly after completing Dr Strangelove (1964), Stanley Kubrick became fascinated by the
possibility of extraterrestrial life, and determined to make "the proverbial good science fiction
movie". Searching for a suitable collaborator in the science fiction community, Kubrick was
advised to seek out Arthur C. Clarke by a mutual acquaintance, Columbia Pictures staffer Roger
Caras. Although convinced that Clarke was "a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree", Kubrick agreed
that Caras would cable the Ceylon-based author with the film proposal. Clarke's cabled response
stated that he was "frightfully interested in working with enfant terrible", and added "what makes
Kubrick think I’m a recluse?"
In early conversations, Kubrick and Clarke jokingly called their project How the Solar System Was
Won, an allusion to the 1962 Cinerama epic How the West Was Won. Like that film, Kubrick's
production would be divided into distinct episodes. Clarke considered adapting a number of his
earlier stories before selecting "The Sentinel", published in 1950, as the starting point for the film.
The collaborators originally planned to develop a novel first, free of the constraints of a normal
script, and then to write the screenplay; they envisaged that the final writing credits would be
"Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and
Stanley Kubrick", to reflect their pre-eminence in their respective fields. However, in practice the
cinematic ideas required for the screenplay developed parallel to the novel, with cross-fertilisation
between the two. In the end, the screenplay credits were shared while the novel, released shortly
after the film, was attributed to Clarke alone, but Clarke wrote later that "the nearest approximation
to the complicated truth" is that the screenplay should be credited to "Kubrick and Clarke" and the
novel to "Clarke and Kubrick".
On 22 February 1965, MGM announced it was backing Kubrick’s new science fiction film under
the title Journey Beyond the Stars. Interviewed by The New Yorker shortly afterwards, Kubrick

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compared the proposed film to "a space Odyssey", and in April he officially changed the title to
2001: A Space Odyssey. The date of 2001 was said to allude to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which was
set in 2026. Arthur C. Clarke kept a diary throughout his involvement with 2001, excerpts of which
were published in 1972 as The Lost Worlds of 2001. Clarke's diary reveals that by the time backing
was secured for Journey Beyond the Stars in early 1965, the writers still had no firm idea of what
would happen to Bowman after the Star Gate sequence, though as early as 17 October 1964
Kubrick had come up with what Clarke called a "wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a
Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease". Initially all of Discovery’s astronauts were to
survive the journey; a decision to leave Bowman as the sole survivor and have him regress to
infancy was agreed by 3 October 1965. The computer HAL was originally to have been called
"Athena", from the Greek goddess of wisdom, with a feminine voice and persona. Clarke noted
that, contrary to popular rumor, it was a complete coincidence that each of the letters of HAL’s
name immediately preceded those of IBM.

2. THE STORY/PLOT, THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE, AND THE CHARACTERS

2.1 Briefly summarize the story/plot starting from the initial sequence (what the situation is like at
the beginning of the film and how the subsequent events/scenes advance); the development (focus
on the main events that link the beginning of the story to the end of the film); and the conclusion
(how the film ends/final part).

The title sequence begins with an image of the Earth rising over the Moon, while the Sun rises over
the Earth.
Over images of an African desert, a caption reads "The Dawn of Man". A tribe of prehistoric ape-
men is struggling to survive in the dry desert. One morning, a mysterious black rectangular
monolith appears near their habitat and is examined
by the nervous apes. Following this encounter, a lone
ape-man (Daniel Richter) invents the first tool when
he picks up a bone from a pile and discovers he can
use it as a club to crush other bones. The tool-using
tribe is seen to be then eating the meat of a tapir
which they killed, whereas they had previously been
eating vegetation. The ape-man, now standing
partially upright, leads the tribe in defense of their waterhole against another tribe, using the new
weapon to club an enemy ape to death. The victorious ape-man throws his weapon into the air, at
which point the film jumps to the future, in a match cut that links the tumbling bone to an orbital
satellite.
A Pan American space plane carrying only one passenger, Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William
Sylvester) docks with an Earth-orbital space station. From the station, Floyd makes a videophone
call to his daughter on Earth (played by Vivian Kubrick). He then encounters an old friend, Elena,
one of a group of Soviet scientists. When he says he is traveling to the American base in Clavius
crater, one of the Soviets, Dr. Andrei Smyslov (Leonard Rossiter), asks why no one has been able to
contact Clavius, mentioning that Clavius had even denied emergency landing permission to a Soviet
shuttle, in violation of international
agreements. Floyd feigns surprise, but when
Smyslov presses him for further details,
alluding to "very reliable intelligence reports"
that a serious epidemic of unknown origin has
broken out at Clavius, and expresses concern
that the epidemic might spread to the Soviet
base, Floyd replies that he is "not at liberty" to
comment.

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Floyd travels to Clavius Base on a lunar shuttle. At the Base, Floyd meets scientists and
administrators and speaks about the importance of hiding the true reason for the base's suspicious
quarantine. He states that the cover story of an epidemic and a base-wide communications black-out
will remain in effect until their superiors on
Earth decide otherwise. He reminds them of
"the potential for cultural shock and social
disorientation" that the discovery presents.
Though ostensibly there to assess the
situation and make a report, Floyd informs
those present that new security oaths are
required from all personnel.
During a later moonbus ride to the excavation, a discussion between Floyd and a base administrator
reveals they have discovered an alien object, "deliberately buried" on the Moon four million years
earlier. At the dig site, the scientists approach an identical monolith to that found by the man-apes;
like them, Floyd strokes its smooth surface. The scientists gather around it for a group photo but are
interrupted when a continuous high-pitched tone is picked up by their radio receivers, apparently
triggered by the first rays of the sun to reach the monolith since its burial.
Three of the Discovery One crew are in a state of
hibernation, ostensibly to conserve resources for
the voyage .At this point, a caption reads "Jupiter
Mission: Eighteen Months Later". On board the
spaceship Discovery One, bound for Jupiter, are
two mission pilots, astronauts Dave Bowman
(Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood),
and three scientists "sleeping" in cryogenic
hibernation. Dave and Frank watch a BBC television program about themselves, in which the "sixth
member" of the crew, the HAL 9000 supercomputer (voiced by Douglas Rain), is introduced and
interviewed. The interview reveals that the supercomputer is the pinnacle in artificial intelligence,
with an error-free performance record. HAL 9000 is designed to communicate and interact like a
human, and even mimics (or reproduces) human emotions; in fact the astronauts have learned to
treat it like another crewman, addressing it as "Hal".
During an informal conversation with Dave,
HAL raises concerns about the unusual
secrecy surrounding the mission, and repeats
rumors about "something being dug up on the
moon." When Dave suggests that HAL's
quizzical conversation is actually part of his
"crew psychology report," HAL abruptly
reports an imminent equipment malfunction.
He claims to have detected a defect in a component of the ship's communications system. Dave
exits the Discovery in an EVA pod to retrieve and replace the faulty AE-35 unit, but upon detailed
examination no fault can be found. Mission controllers back on Earth assert that HAL is "in error in
predicting the fault", something unheard of for the 9000 series. HAL suggests another EVA mission
to restore the part and wait for it to fail: this will
determine the problem. Hiding their concern, Dave
and Frank retreat to a pod to discuss, in secret,
HAL's questionable reliability. They finally agree to
"disconnect" him should the AE-35 not fail, as he
predicted. Unbeknownst to them, however, HAL is
reading their lips. As Dave watches from inside
Discovery, Frank exits in a pod to put back the

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original AE-35. While Frank is performing the EVA, HAL takes control of the empty pod, and
accelerates it at Frank, severing his oxygen hose and sending his body tumbling in space. Dave
hurriedly exits the ship in another pod to rescue Frank, forgetting to bring his space helmet. While
Dave is outside, HAL kills the three hibernating scientists by deactivating their life support systems.
Upon returning to the ship with Frank's lifeless body, Dave is refused reentry into the ship by HAL.
HAL reveals that he knows of Frank and Dave's plan to disconnect him, and asserts that the mission
is "too important" to allow any human to jeopardize it. HAL terminates the conversation. After
releasing Frank's body, Dave opens an air lock, and activates the pod's emergency hatch bolts. The
explosive decompression propels him into the airlock, exposed to the vacuum of space without a
helmet, but he manages to close and pressurize
the airlock.
Bowman (here seen in his space suit, from
above) enters HAL 9000's Central Core in the
Discovery to disconnect his "higher functions".
Safely inside the ship, Dave enters HAL's
'Logic Memory Center'. As HAL futilely
attempts to negotiate with him, Dave proceeds
to disconnect his higher brain functions. HAL pleads and protests his termination, slowly regresses
to past memories, sings a song he learned during his initial programming, and finally falls silent.
Suddenly, a pre-recorded video briefing by Dr. Floyd plays, explaining the true nature of the
mission — to investigate the signal sent to Jupiter from the alien artefacts on the Moon. Floyd
discloses that the secret mission had been known only to HAL
until the ship's arrival in Jupiter space.
A caption reads "Jupiter and beyond the Infinite". A third
monolith is seen in orbit around Jupiter. As the planet and its
moons and the monolith appear to align, Dave exits Discovery
One in a pod to investigate. He appears to travel across vast
distances of space and time through a "Star Gate," a tunnel of
colourful light and imagery and sound. After
passing over the landscape of an alien world,
Bowman arrives in a futuristic room containing
Louis XVI-style décor which was modelled after
The Dorchester hotel in London. As he walks
about the room, he repeatedly sees himself at later
stages of aging, first in his spacesuit, then in an
ornate dressing robe, sitting down to a well-
appointed meal. The older Dave accidentally knocks his glass on the floor, smashing it and breaking
the silence. Looking up from the broken glass, he sees
himself lying on what appears to be his deathbed, at the
foot of which appears a final monolith. Dave slowly
reaches out to it and is transformed into a fetus-like being
enclosed in a transparent orb of light — the "Star Child".
The film suddenly returns to space near the Moon and
Earth. Floating in space, the Star Child gazes at Earth.

2.2 Analyse the narrative structure by filling in the following outline:

• TIME AND CONTEXT
a) Historical background
Stanley Kubrick decides to place his film in a hypothetical 2001. The film shows an imagined
version of the year 2001. Some of what is seen in the film has come to pass:

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 flat-screen computer monitors (simulated by
rear projection in the film); glass cockpits in
spacecraft; the proliferation of TV stations
(the BBC's channels numbering at least 12);
telephone numbers with more digits than in
the 1960s (to permit direct national and
international dialing); the endurance of
corporations like IBM, Aeroflot, Howard
Johnson's, and Hilton Hotels; the use of credit cards with data stripes (the card Heywood Floyd
inserts into the telephone is American Express; a close-up photo of the prop shows that it has a
barcode rather than a magnetic strip, as some present-day ID cards have PDF417 barcodes);
biometric identification (voice-print identification on arrival at the space station); the shape of the
Pan Am Orbital Clipper was echoed in the X-34, a prototype craft that underwent towed flight tests
from 1999 to 2001 ; electronic darkening of a normally transparent surface (Bowman uses a helmet
control to darken his visor during an EVA) ; a computer that can defeat a human being at chess;
personal in-flight entertainment displays on the backs of seats in commercial aircraft; voice
recognition / voice controlled computing (although not as powerful as HAL) are seen today in
things as simple as telephone systems and video games.
Establishing a permanent colony on the moon is not yet a reality. Some of the things in the film
were not yet realities by 2001: widespread use of videophones; commonplace space travel; space
stations with hotels and other tourist facilities; colonization of the Moon; technology to put humans
into long-term suspended animation; a computer with artificial intelligence that exhibits sentience,
self-motivation, and independent judgment; a successor agency to the American National
Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In the other hand, some of the things depicted in the film that existed in 1968, but no longer existed
in 2001:The American Bell System; Pan American; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

b) Place/location/setting/pervading atmosphere

In the beginning the film is set on earth, then, with the

evolving of human eras and the conquer of the moon
and the total space, the film is placed on board the
spaceship Discovery One, bound for Jupiter. It’ funny
to see how Kubrick imagines a future more
technological than really it is!

c) Time/period
The time explained in the film is expanded, it goes from the evolution of man (from ape to homo
sapiens), to the destruction of the same man, made by what he had created to make him easier life
and job, the machine. So we can see how the man is the cause of himself dissolution.

• CHARACTERS
Mains character (who he/she is, physical description, what he/she does personal qualities,
behaviour, feelings, etc.):
∼ Dave Bowman is interesting more for the
incredibly unique experiences that he
undergoes than for his personality, which is
not deeply developed in 2001. A capable
astronaut, he is one of the two chosen to
man the entire trip to Saturn. The first
major disruption occurs when Hal

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 deliberately kills Poole and the rest of the hibernating crew. Bowman has to deal both with
being alone and with a psychotic computer. He shows great poise in disconnecting Hal and
putting the ship back in order. Finding out about the true nature of the mission, Bowman is
galvanized. He becomes strictly disciplined and wonders about what his encounter with this
other intelligent civilization will bring. Bowman undergoes a second, radical transformation
when, passing through the Star Gate, he is eventually stripped of his physical being and
immortalized. Through this change he maintains a fondness for and interest in the affairs of
Earth, revisiting it to save it from nuclear destruction.

∼ The least human, but the most psychologically

complex of the book's characters, Hal 9000 is
an artificially intelligent robot. Conceived
deep within the laboratories of men, he
possesses an artificially created
consciousness, tantamount to man's. Yet, he
has the computing power and precision of the
most advanced machine. His is programmed to essentially run the Discovery shuttle and to
be able to communicate with its human occupants. As the story develops, so does Hal. He
begins to show signs of emotion—something he had not been explicitly programmed to
display. Hal has been programmed to know the purpose of the Discovery mission, yet he is
meant to keep it a secret from the people with whom he works constantly. This produces a
great tension within Hal and the resulting feelings of guilt begin to manifest themselves. For
the first time, Hal errs in his diagnosis of machinery. If he is discovered to have erred, he
will be shut off. To Hal, being shut off is tantamount to death—the threat of this fate is too
much for him to bear, so he hatches a plan. First, he sabotages the satellite connection with
Earth. When Poole goes outside the ship to collect the second AE-35 unit, which Hal has
diagnosed as faulty, Hal kills him. Otherwise, Hal is mistaken diagnosis would have been
discovered and Hal threatened with death. Finally, when Hal realizes that Bowman suspects
foul play, he attempts to rid the ship of all humans, so that he can continue on. Hal's
development is rooted in his development of self-consciousness. He is programmed as an
incredibly complex being, to perform high-level tasks. Along the way and unplanned,
however, he develops a notion of himself. He becomes aware of himself as someone who
acts and makes choices. This leads Hal first to feel guilty—he sees that he is acting in a
dishonest fashion. Then, when threatened with being shut off, Hal faces the ultimate loss. He
has come to value his conscious process just as much as humans value their own lives.
Because he conceives of himself as an individual and because he places value on his
continued existence, Hal is led to pursue the most offensive murder so he can defend
himself.

3. Global meaning of the film

• What is the central message of the film?
Since its premiere, 2001: A Space Odyssey has been analyzed and interpreted by multitudes of
people ranging from professional movie critics to amateur writers and science fiction fans. Kubrick
encouraged people to explore their own interpretations of the film, and refused to offer an
explanation of "what really happened" in the movie, preferring instead to let audiences embrace
their own ideas and theories. In a 1968 interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick stated:
“You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film —
and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level
— but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to
pursue or else fear he's missed the point.”

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 •
Decide which of the following themes are developed in the film. The list may be of some
help but you can also add more.
□Love □War □Justice □Youth □Old age □Lack of communication □Quest for success
□Fate □Nature □Personal ambitions □Violence □Family life x The future □Social
institutions x Work and jobs x The machine

4. Personal opinion
• Relate if you liked the film (or if you didn’t like the film) and motivate your answer, taking
into consideration how the film was produced (interest in the story/plot, acting,
photography, costumes, music, etc.).
Kubrick's 2001 is not for everyone. But anyone with a little bit of insight and imagination will not
be able to help being captivated by this wonderful and powerful film. 2001 is not only a realistic
space epic, it is a commentary on the past, present, and future of mankind. It shows how small
humanity is in the grand scheme of the universe and how we hold our destiny in our own hands.
This film prompted a lifelong interest in science, space exploration, and technology. It's effect was
similar to that of another great sci-fi epic, Star Wars, but it is by far a much deeper and overall,
really, a technically better film. It remains the only movie to accurately depict human spaceflight,
though Arthur C. Clarke got the timeframe for space colonization off the mark by a few years. But
keep in mind that at the time, no one was predicting, as Clarke did, the tremendous potential and
impact that computers and artificial intelligence would have on future society. Take a look around
today and , though we don't have HAL yet, see how much of he did get right, and how our
technology and computers have permeated our entire planet. This represents the hope, and the
danger, facing all mankind.
So much of this film has been absorbed by pop culture it is amazing..."What are you doing
Dave?"...The Star Child...HAL...The Blue Danube...it truly stands as a monument to cinema and it
is a film that I cannot recommend highly enough.

5. Technical elements

• Special effects:
This film pioneered retroreflective matting (front projection) used in the African scenes where apes
learn to use tools. Static landscape transparency images were projected through a partly-silvered
mirror placed diagonally before the camera. The projected landscape image illuminates both the
actors and the retro-reflective glass-bead background screen. The projected landscape is invisible on
the actors because it is dimmer than the scene illumination. The glass-bead background screen
selectively reflects the landscape and actors' images to the camera, passing through the mirror and
photographed as the background of the scene the audience view. The projected background image is
reflected in the eyes of the leopard, because the feline retina is highly reflective. Front projection
produced more realistic images than did other methods of the time; today, computer-processed
bluescreen techniques have replaced it. Director of Photography Geoffrey Unsworth wanted the
film to not be muddied up with printing effects such as blue screen, so the space travel effects were
done in-camera. The model of the Discovery One space craft was moved along a track,
mechanically linked to the camera. On the first pass, the model was unlit, masking the star-field.
The model and film were returned to the start position, and on the second pass, the model was lit.
For the third pass, motion picture frames were projected onto retroreflective screens in the model's
windows, showing the interior of the ship. The result was a film negative that was as sharp as live
footage.

• Music:

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Music plays a crucial part in 2001, and not only because of the relatively sparse dialogue. From
very early on in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily non-verbal
experience, one that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which
music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods.
The film is remarkable for its innovative use of classical music taken from existing commercial
recordings. Major feature films were (and still are) typically accompanied by elaborate film scores
or songs written especially for them by professional composers. In the early stages of production,
Kubrick had actually commissioned a score for 2001 from noted Hollywood composer Alex North,
who had written the stirring score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. However, on
2001 Kubrick did much of the filming and editing using, as his guides, the classical recordings
which eventually became the music track. In March of 1966, MGM became concerned about 2001's
progress and Kubrick put together a show reel of footage to the ad hoc soundtrack of classical
recordings. The studio bosses were delighted with the results and Kubrick decided to use these
'guide pieces' as the final musical soundtrack, and he abandoned North's score. Kubrick failed to
inform North that his music had not been used and, to his dismay, North did not discover this until
he saw the movie just prior to its release. What survives of North's soundtrack recordings has been
released as a "limited edition" CD from Intrada Records. All the music North originally wrote was
recorded commercially by North's friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National
Philharmonic Orchestra and was released on Varese Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first
theme release but before North's death. In 2005, The City of Prague Philharmonic recorded their
version of the 2001 theme on their album "The Incredible Film Music Box".
In an interview with Michel Ciment,
Kubrick explained:
“However good our best film composers
may be, they are not a Beethoven, a
Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music
which is less good when there is such a
multitude of great orchestral music
available from the past and from our
own time? When you are editing a film,
it's very helpful to be able to try out different pieces of music to see how they work with the
scene…Well, with a little more care and thought, these temporary tracks can become the final
score.”
2001 uses works by several classical composers. It features music by Aram Khachaturian (Gayane's
Adagio from the Gayaneh ballet suite) and famously used Johann Strauss II's best known waltz, An
der schönen blauen Donau (in English, On The Beautiful Blue Danube), during the space-station
rendezvous and lunar landing sequences. 2001 is especially remembered for its use of the opening
from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra (or "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" in English), which has
become inextricably associated with the film and its imagery and themes. The film's soundtrack also
did much to introduce the modern classical composer György Ligeti to a wider public, using
extracts from his Requiem (the Kyrie), Atmosphères, Lux Aeterna and (in an altered form)
Adventures (though without his permission). HAL's haunting version of the popular song "Daisy
Bell" (referred to by HAL as "Daisy" in the film) was inspired by a computer synthesized
arrangement by Max Mathews, which Arthur C. Clarke had heard in 1962 at the Bell Laboratories
Murray Hill facility when he was, coincidentally, visiting friend and colleague John Pierce. At that
time, a speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, by
using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder
recreated the song "Daisy Bell" ("Bicycle Built For Two"), with Max Mathews providing the
musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later used it in the screenplay
and novel.

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"Daisy" did not necessarily survive in foreign language versions of the film. For example, in the
French soundtrack to 2001, HAL while being disconnected sings the French folk song Au Clair de
la Lune. In Italian version the song was "giro giro tondo", the one you sing when you play ring-
ring-a-roses. In the german version, HAL sings the children's song "Hänschen klein" ("Johnny
little").

• Dialogue:
Alongside its use of music, the dialogue in 2001 is another notable feature, although the relative
lack of dialogue and conventional narrative cues has baffled many viewers. One of the film's most
striking features is that there is no dialogue whatsoever for the entirety of the first and last 20
minutes of the film—the total narrative of these sections, totalling almost 45 minutes of the film is
carried by images, actions, sound effects, and two title cards.
Only when the film moves into the postulated future of 2000 and 2001, do we encounter characters
who speak. By the time shooting began, Kubrick had deliberately jettisoned much of the intended
dialogue and narration, and what remains is notable for its apparently banal nature—an
announcement about a sweater being found, the awkwardly polite chit-chat between Floyd and the
Russian scientists, or his comments about the sandwiches en route to the monolith site.

6. Art director and other notes

6.1 Art director: biography and his artistic productions

Stanley Kubrick was born in 1928 in New York City. Jack

Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth
birthday would prove to be a wise move: Kubrick became an avid
photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking
photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After
selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick
began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of
seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer. In the
next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and
would become a voracious moviegoer.
In 1950 Kubrick sank his savings into making the documentary
Day of the Fight (1950). This was followed by several short
commissioned documentaries Flying Padre (1951), and The
Seafarers (1952), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was
able to make Fear and Desire (1953) in California. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself,
Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents. Kubrick's next two films Killer's
Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956), brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957
directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas later called upon Kubrick to take over the
production of Spartacus (1960), by some accounts hoping that Kubrick would be daunted by the
scale of the project and would thus be accommodating. This was not the case, however: Kubrick
took charge of the project, imposing his ideas and standards on the film.
Disenchanted with Hollywood and after another failed marriage, Kubrick moved permanently to
England, from where he would make all of his subsequent films. Kubrick's first UK film was Lolita
(1962), which was carefully constructed and guided so as to not offend the censorship boards which
at the time had the power to severely damage the commercial success of a film. Dr. Strangelove or:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) was a big risk for Kubrick; before this,
"nuclear" was not considered a subject for comedy. Originally written as a drama, Kubrick decided
that too many of the ideas he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. The film's
critical and commercial success allowed Kubrick the financial and artistic freedom to work on any

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project he desired. The next film completed was a collaboration with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is hailed by many as the best ever made; an instant cult favourite, it
has set the standard and tone for many science fiction films that followed.
Kubrick followed this with Clockwork Orange, A (1971), which rivalled Lolita (1962) for the
controversy it generated - this time not for only for its portrayal of sex, but also of violence. Barry
Lyndon (1975) would prove a turning point in both his professional and private lives. His
unrelenting demands of commitment and perfection of cast and crew had by now become
legendary. Next Kubrick made an adaptation of a Stephen King novel: Shining, The (1980).
Kubrick's subsequent work has been well spaced: it was seven years before Full Metal Jacket
(1987) was released. Seen by one critic as the dark side to the humanist story of Platoon (1986),
Full Metal Jacket (1987) continued Kubrick's legacy of solid critical acclaim, and profit at the box
office. The 1990s has seen Kubrick collaborate with Brian Adliss on Artificial Intelligence: AI
(2001), and begin filming Eyes Wide Shut (1999) with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman under
unprecedented security and privacy.

6.2 Other notes

• Deleted scenes: Kubrick filmed several
scenes that were deleted from the final
film. These include a schoolroom on the
moon base; Floyd buying a bush baby
from a department store, via videophone,
for his daughter; additional space walks;
and astronaut Bowman retrieving a spare
part from an octagonal corridor. The most
notable cut was a 10-minute black-and-
white opening sequence featuring interviews with actual scientists discussing extraterrestrial
life, which Kubrick removed after an early screening for MGM executives.

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