2001: A Space Odyssey

Director: Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick

Overview

A mind-bending sci-fi symphony, Stanley Kubrick's landmark 1968 epic pushed the limits of narrative and special effects toward a meditation on technology and humanity. Based on Arthur C. Clarke's story The Sentinel, Kubrick and Clarke's screenplay is structured in four movements. At the "Dawn of Man," a group of hominids encounters a mysterious black monolith alien to their surroundings. To the strains of Strauss's 1896 "Also sprach Zarathustra," a hominid invents the first weapon, using a bone to kill prey. As the hominid tosses the bone in the air, Kubrick cuts to a 21st century spacecraft hovering over the Earth, skipping ahead millions of years in technological development. U.S. scientist Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) travels to the moon to check out the discovery of a strange object on the moon's surface: a black monolith. As the sun's rays strike the stone, however, it emits a piercing, deafening sound that fills the investigators' headphones and stops them in their path. Cutting ahead 18 months, impassive astronauts David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) head toward Jupiter on the spaceship Discovery, their only company three hibernating astronauts and the vocal, man-made HAL 9000 computer running the entire ship. When the all-too-human HAL malfunctions, however, he tries to murder the astronauts to cover his error, forcing Bowman to defend himself the only way he can. Free of HAL, and finally informed of the voyage's purpose by a recording from Floyd, Bowman journeys to "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite," through the psychedelic slit-scan star-gate to an 18th century room, and the completion of the monolith's evolutionary mission. With assistance from special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull, Kubrick spent over two years meticulously creating the most "realistic" depictions of outer space ever seen, greatly advancing cinematic technology for a story expressing grave doubts about technology itself. Despite some initial critical reservations that it was too long and too dull, 2001 became one of the most popular films of 1968, underlining the generation gap between young moviegoers who wanted to see something new and challenging and oldsters who "didn't get it." Provocatively billed as "the ultimate trip," 2001 quickly caught on with a counterculture youth audience open to a contemplative (i.e. chemically enhanced) viewing experience of a film suggesting that the way to enlightenment was to free one's mind of the U.S. military-industrial-technological complex.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/13/2018
UPC:	0883929630561
Original Release:	1968
Rating:	G
Source:	Mgm (Warner)

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Keir Dullea	Bowman
Gary Lockwood	Poole
William Sylvester	Dr. Heywood Floyd
Daniel Richter	Moonwatcher, the Man-Ape
Douglas Rain	HAL 9000
Leonard Rossiter	Smyslov
Margaret Tyzack	Elena
Robert Beatty	Halvorsen
Sean Sullivan	Michaels
John Ashley	Astronaut
Glenn Beck	Actor
Simon Davis	Actor
Ann Gillis	Actor
David Hines	Ape
John Jordan	Actor
Vivian Kubrick	Floyd's Daughter
Bill Weston	Actor
Terry Duggan	Actor
Frank Miller	Mission Controller
Ed Bishop	Lunar shuttle captain
Alan Gifford	Poole's Father
Edwina Carroll	Stewardess
Penny Brahms	Stewardess
Tony Jackson	Actor

Technical Credits

Stanley Kubrick

Arthur C. Clarke

Stanley Kubrick	Director,Producer,Screenwriter,Special Effects
Hardy Amies	Costumes/Costume Designer
Ernest Archer	Production Designer
Arthur C. Clarke	Screenwriter
Derek Cracknell	Asst. Director
Stuart Freeborn	Makeup
John Hoesli	Art Director
Tom Howard	Special Effects
Harry Lange	Production Designer
Bryan Loftus	Special Effects
Bruce Logan	Special Effects
Ray Lovejoy	Editor
Victor Lyndon	Producer
Tony Masters	Production Designer
Alex North	Score Composer
David D. Osborn	Special Effects
Douglas Trumbull	Special Effects
Geoffrey Unsworth	Cinematographer
Wally Veevers	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

Dubbed the "ultimate trip" in its day, Stanley Kubrick's influential masterpiece remains true to both senses of the phrase. A controlled kaleidoscope of images and ideas, 2001: A Space Odyssey is both a space-travel adventure and, with its explosive climactic sequence, a hallucinogenic voyage of the mind. Based on the Arthur C. Clarke story "The Sentinel," 2001 initially bewildered many viewers with its lengthy, wordless opening sequence involving prehistoric protohumans and a mysterious black monolith. Jumping four million years into the future, two robotic astronauts (Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood) and a supercomputer named HAL, who seems more human than they are, head to Jupiter aboard the space-ship Discovery. This doomed mission produces such iconic scenes as the homicidal HAL's attack on the astronauts and the legendarily enigmatic "star child" birth set to Richard Strauss's "Thus Spake Zarathustra." 2001's unconventional approach to narrative thrilled adventurous '60s audiences, and fans still ponder the questions this landmark science-fiction film raises. Is the monolith God or the work of aliens? Only God and the late Stanley Kubrick know for sure.

Barnes & Noble - Frank Lovece

This limited-edition collector's classic box set of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey includes the restored digital transfer on DVD, the original soundtrack on CD, a 16-page behind-the-scenes booklet, a 70mm film frame matted and suitable for framing, and a free poster offer.

Barnes & Noble

Stanley Kubrick rewrote the book on what a mainstream, major-studio motion picture could look, sound, and feel like with this groundbreaking work. At a time when science fiction onscreen meant bug-eyed monsters menacing scantily clad women, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a visually dazzling and intellectually challenging experience. Kubrick abandoned narrative convention to tell four tangentially related stories about man's destiny, reflected in the conquest of space. Kubrick also insisted that a story set in outer space should look like it was taking place in outer space, and his special effects team (headed by Douglas Trumbull) created some of the most stunning visual effects to appear onscreen before or since. Unlike the effects-laden films that followed in the wake of Star Wars, the imagery in 2001 doesn't slow the story but helps move it along, and it creates a genuine sense of wonder about the beautiful, dangerous vastness of space. Kubrick's embrace of avant-garde music and abstract visual textures brought experimental art to an audience that had no exposure to the works of such '60s avant-garde filmmakers as Stan Brakhage or Jordan Belson, and the film's resulting "trippy" atmosphere greatly increased its popularity (and revenue) as a late '60s drug movie. Still as richly thought-provoking as ever, 2001: A Space Odyssey remains a watershed work in '60s cinema and lives up to its billing as "the ultimate trip."

All Movie Guide - Mark Deming