13 thoughts on “2001”

  1. I was transfixed by 2001 went it came out in my sordid youth. Now, not so much. Obscurity and symbolism no longer translate as profundity.

    1. Watching it circa 1980, the part that stuck in my post-Watergate sensibilities was the pep talk NASA Administrator Heywood Floyd gave to the scientists on Clavius Base. The part of thanking them for bearing with the Moon Plague cover story where the folks and family back home were thinking the worst, but they were doing their Duty to the American Flag by keeping their discovery of an alien artifact from the world . . . for its own good. Along with the part of the scientists giving Administrator Floyd an atta-boy for coming up with that scheme. If these were any scientists I know from the U, they would already be throwing stuff at the podium.

      I guess part of this is the Area 51 conspiracy where the gummint knows about the space aliens but is hiding this from the public. Another part is the scientists as the elite keeping disruptive knowledge from the public for our own good. Another part is the Frankenstein mythos of the scientists doing something dangerous, in this case, excavating an alien artifact that we don’t known isn’t a cosmic IED, and if the public found out, the public would be justified in storming NASA JSC with pitch forks. So maybe these are old-fashioned sci-fi tropes rather than an indictment of Nixon’s secrecy?

      1. ” So maybe these are old-fashioned sci-fi tropes rather than an indictment of Nixon’s secrecy?”

        They are. Just watch a couple 1950’s Sci-fi movies and you’ll see the same things. Especially the one about scientists doing Dangerous Things ™ (see “This Island Earth”).

  2. I saw it for the second time when visiting the Harvard University campus at the “cheap movies.” This was in the early 1980’s.

    About a minute into the Dawn of Man chapter at the beginning where we see the apes, some wise guy in the audience heckles, “I don’t understand it!”

  3. My local Cinemark had it in their weekly series of classic films about a year ago. Loved it!

    January ’13, according to a Google search.

  4. I saw it originally, and the 1980’s.

    That return was made memorable by the projectionist leaving the country western music running in the background od the Dawn of Man sequence. It still makes me smile.

  5. In the 1960s, “2001” was popular with hippies using chemicals to enhance the experience. I suspect it’ll be popular in Colorado with people sneeking in munchable pot products.

    One thing about a Kubric movie that you seldom see anymore is his willingness to allow a scene to take it’s natural course. Very few modern movies would have a scene as long as the rendezvous and docking sequence (lasts the full length of the “Blue Danube Waltz”. It seems most people’s attention spans are too short for scenes like that any more.

    So maybe these are old-fashioned sci-fi tropes rather than an indictment of Nixon’s secrecy?

    IIRC, “2001” came out in 1968 when Johnson was president.

    1. I was born the same year the movie came out, and when I was a baby, people were landing willy-nilly all over the moon. I watched the movie when I was about 12 or so, and the next year I got up at 2am to watch the countdown and launch of the first Shuttle flight. It still seemed barely possible, then, that in 20 years a person could hop a flight into space (and be so used to it they’d fall asleep).

      A third of a century later, we still haven’t launched a centrifuge or a Pod. Computers can play grandmaster chess and speak and parse spoken human language, but they aren’t making moral decisions – but neither is any computer in the position of a single-point-of-failure in manned space missions.

      As the year itself fades into the past, the movie becomes more and more a reminder of the squandering of opportunity by NASA.

  6. IIRC, “2001” came out in 1968 when Johnson was president.

    Um, try and keep up. I viewed the movie a second time circa 1980, after Watergate and after the massive media bombardment telling us what to think about Watergate. I saw it the first time nearer to its initial theatrical release, which of course was before Watergate, and Heywood Floyd’s conspiracy to “cover up” the Monolith did not evoke a second thought.

    The movie is what it is, but seeing it before Watergate and after Watergate (it’s not the break-in, it’s the cover up) resulted in an entirely different impression. Were I to see it a third time post 9-11, I may have yet another impression regarding the need for officials to keep secrets.

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