Music Banter - Oriphiel, let's discuss 2001: A Space Odyssey

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I remember enjoying the movie as a child but it's been forever. Never read the book. Kinda tempted to watch it now actually.

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Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls (Post 1570334)

I remember enjoying the movie as a child but it's been forever. Never read the book. Kinda tempted to watch it now actually.

Be warned, it's almost three hours long. Frownland would kill me for saying this, but don't be ashamed if you feel the need to fast forward every now and then. :laughing:

It goes a lot faster if you skip the 20 minutes of blank screen. Those scenes are like having a staring contest with a clock.

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Originally Posted by Oriphiel (Post 1570336)

Be warned, it's almost three hours long. Frownland would kill me for saying this, but don't be ashamed if you feel the need to fast forward every now and then.

Fast forwarding through 2001 should be a crime. Every second of that movie was meticulously planned and deserves to be savored.

http://bellerophone.sfblogs.net/file...n-picture.jpeg

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Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570362)

Fast forwarding through 2001 should be a crime. Every second of that movie was meticulously planned and deserves to be savored.

The real crime is the pretension surrounding the film. If fast forwarding helps someone to watch and get involved with the picture, then I think even Kubrick himself would say "Go for it". After all, the extra depth is still there for those willing to look for and enjoy it.

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Originally Posted by Oriphiel (Post 1570365)

Does that make you unwilling to enjoy it? The long tracking ****s are fantastic imo, they really add to the spacey aesthetic.

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Originally Posted by Frownland (Post 1570366)

Does that make you unwilling to enjoy it? The long tracking ****s are fantastic imo, they really add to the spacey aesthetic.

I think you misinterpreted my comment. I was trying to say that 2001 is the kind of movie that works on different levels, and is a different experience for different people. For the people who like the long and redundant shots/scenes, they're there for the watching. But for those of us who don't get anything out of them, why wouldn't we skip them? It's the same principle as listening to an album; some people like to listen to the songs all at once, as a whole, to get the full experience (especially when the artist intended each song to be played in sequence), while others only regularly listen to the songs they like (especially when each song was created to stand alone). Kubrick gave us an album that (while flawed) has something to say either way; it's meticulously crafted to be played in sequence, but also features meticulously crafted songs that stand firmly on their own. As it is with most of his movies, the choice of how deep you're willing to go is left to each member of the audience, and no one opinion or method is "better" or more "correct" than any other.

I personally found that the depth of the movie was redundant and incredibly unnecessary, and I really do believe that the movie would have benefited from being shortened (as well as having more dialogue and characterization). That doesn't mean that I was unwilling to enjoy it, because I really did give it a fair shot during each scene to have a purpose before I skipped it. Some people don't need or want ten minutes to come to a conclusion about what the director was trying to say with a scene; it only takes us a moment, and dwelling any longer is just not for us. It's just as unreasonable for you to expect me to like incredibly long shots of one action taking place, as it is for me to expect you to like movies where every scene seems to superficially flash by in an instant (ala Michael Bay).

Anyone else thinks that the special effects in the monkey scenes have aged worse than the SFX in the others? Obviously they did a great job, but the space scenes just come off as more convincing, even nowadays.

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Originally Posted by grindy (Post 1570373)

Definitely. The models and sets throughout the movie are downright gorgeous at times, but the monkey suits didn't impress me at all. :laughing:

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Originally Posted by Oriphiel (Post 1570374)

Definitely. The models and sets throughout the movie are downright gorgeous at times, but the monkey suits didn't impress me at all. :laughing:

The backgrounds done with front projection also bugged me a little. Even more so compared to the incredibly beautiful real shots of those landscapes.

Now i'm just waiting for Chula to be like "THOSE MONKEY SUITS WERE A WORK OF ART, YOU MONSTER!"

Anyway, here's a cool article about actors in full body suits, and it features one of the guys who wore one of those monkey suits (who also apparently choreographed the scene)!

Meet the Actors Inside Classic Full-Body Costumes

"THOSE MONKEY SUITS WERE A WORK OF ART, YOU MONSTER!"

What's a real crime is that 2001 lost out to Planet of the Apes that year for the Oscar.

This:
http://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/...oonwatcher.jpg

vs:
http://www.blastr.com/sites/blastr/f...?itok=JF-tkrbo

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Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570384)

I've actually never seen Planet Of The Apes.
Don't think it could be as good as 2001, but is it good at all?

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Originally Posted by grindy (Post 1570386)

Don't think it could be as good as 2001, but is it good at all?

2001 lost for costume design. It's an ok movie - for the time is was a revelation. Especially for the creationist sect who went bat**** against it. And the final scene is pretty iconic. But it's pretty corny viewed today.

As a self-appointed cultural curator, this thread has inspired me to close up some of the gaping holes in my cinematic catalog. I'll watch 2001 tomorrow, and follow it up with Eraserhead (a film my girlfriend swears by.)

Thank you all who've taken part in this discussion thus far. I've lived far too long without seeing this film, and you've set me on a path to remedy this promptly.

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Originally Posted by Oriphiel (Post 1570258)

No offense, but I think you should elaborate more on why that specific scene stuck out to you.

none taken.

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Originally Posted by innerspaceboy (Post 1570396)

Make sure to tell us what you think of it!

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Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth (Post 1570398)

none taken.

Dammit, JWB! :laughing:

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Originally Posted by innerspaceboy (Post 1570396)

As a self-appointed cultural curator, this thread has inspired me to close up some of the gaping holes in my cinematic catalog. I'll watch 2001 tomorrow.

Might be worthwhile to read this excellent review first to be able to put things in context.

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It was e. e. cummings, the poet, who said he'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance. I imagine cummings would not have enjoyed Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space
Odyssey," in which stars dance but birds do not sing. The fascinating thing about this film is that it fails on the human level but succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale.

Kubrick's universe, and the space ships he constructed to explore it, are simply out of scale with human concerns. The ships are perfect, impersonal machines which venture from one planet to another, and if men are tucked away somewhere inside them, then they get there too.

But the achievement belongs to the machine. And Kubrick's actors seem to sense this; they are lifelike but without emotion, like figures in a wax museum. Yet the machines are necessary because man himself is so helpless in the face of the universe.

Kubrick begins his film with a sequence in which one tribe of apes discovers how splendid it is to be able to hit the members of another tribe over the head. Thus do man's ancestors become tool-using animals.

At the same time, a strange monolith appears on Earth. Until this moment in the film, we have seen only natural shapes: earth and sky and arms and legs. The shock of the monolith's straight edges and square corners among the weathered rocks is one of the most effective moments in the film. Here, you see, is perfection. The apes circle it warily, reaching out to touch, then jerking away. In a million years, man will reach for the stars with the same tentative motion.

Who put the monolith there? Kubrick never answers, for which I suppose we must be thankful. The action advances to the year 2001, when explorers on the moon find another of the monoliths. This one beams signals toward Jupiter. And man, confident of his machines, brashly follows the trail.

Only at this point does a plot develop. The ship manned by two pilots, Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood. Three scientists are put on board in suspended animation to conserve supplies. The pilots grow suspicious of the computer, "Hal," which runs the ship. But they behave so strangely -- talking in monotones like characters from "Dragnet" -- that we're hardly interested.

There is hardly any character development in the plot, then, as a result little suspense. What remains fascinating is the fanatic care with which Kubrick has built his machines and achieved his special effects. There is not a single moment, in this long film, when the audience can see through the props. The stars look like stars and outer space is bold and bleak.

Some of Kubrick's effects have been criticized as tedious. Perhaps they are, but I can understand his motives. If his space vehicles move with agonizing precision, wouldn't we have laughed if they'd zipped around like props on "Captain Video"? This is how it would really be, you find yourself believing.

In any event, all the machines and computers are forgotten in this astonishing last half-hour of this film, and man somehow comes back into his own. Another monolith is found beyond Jupiter, pointing to the stars. It apparently draws the spaceship into a universe where time and space are twisted.

What Kubrick is saying, in the final sequence, apparently, is that man will eventually outgrow his machines, or be drawn beyond them by some cosmic awareness. He will then become a child again, but a child of an infinitely more advanced, more ancient race, just as apes once became, to their own dismay, the infant stage of man.

And the monoliths? Just road markers, I suppose, each one pointing to a destination so awesome that the traveler cannot imagine it without being transfigured. Or as cummings wrote on another occasion, "listen -- there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go." - Roger Ebert 1968

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Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570412)

Might be worthwhile to read this excellent review first to be able to put things in context.

Thanks very much! That framed the film up nicely!

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Originally Posted by innerspaceboy (Post 1570494)

Thanks very much! That framed the film up nicely!

Ebert re-visited the film in 1997 and wrote this as part of his "Classic Movies" series of reviews.

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The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in "2001: A Space Odyssey," but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001" is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

No little part of his effect comes from the music. Although Kubrick originally commissioned an original score from Alex North, he used classical recordings as a temporary track while editing the film, and they worked so well that he kept them. This was a crucial decision. North's score, which is available on a recording, is a good job of film composition, but would have been wrong for “2001" because, like all scores, it attempts to underline the action -- to give us emotional cues. The classical music chosen by Kubrick exists outside the action. It uplifts. It wants to be sublime; it brings a seriousness and transcendence to the visuals.

Consider two examples. The Johann Strauss waltz “Blue Danube,'' which accompanies the docking of the space shuttle and the space station, is deliberately slow, and so is the action. Obviously such a docking process would have to take place with extreme caution (as we now know from experience), but other directors might have found the space ballet too slow, and punched it up with thrilling music, which would have been wrong.

We are asked in the scene to contemplate the process, to stand in space and watch. We know the music. It proceeds as it must. And so, through a peculiar logic, the space hardware moves slowly because it's keeping the tempo of the waltz. At the same time, there is an exaltation in the music that helps us feel the majesty of the process.

Now consider Kubrick's famous use of Richard Strauss' “Thus Spake Zarathustra.'' Inspired by the words of Nietzsche, its five bold opening notes embody the ascension of man into spheres reserved for the gods. It is cold, frightening, magnificent.

The music is associated in the film with the first entry of man's consciousness into the universe - -and with the eventual passage of that consciousness onto a new level, symbolized by the Star Child at the end of the film. When classical music is associated with popular entertainment, the result is usually to trivialize it (who can listen to the “William Tell Overture'' without thinking of the Lone Ranger?). Kubrick's film is almost unique in enhancing the music by its association with his images.

I attended the Los Angeles premiere of the film, in 1968, at the Pantages Theater. It is impossible to describe the anticipation in the audience adequately. Kubrick had been working on the film in secrecy for some years, in collaboration, the audience knew, with author Arthur C. Clarke, special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull and consultants who advised him on the specific details of his imaginary future -- everything from space station design to corporate logos. Fearing to fly and facing a deadline, Kubrick had sailed from England on the Queen Elizabeth, doing the editing while on board, and had continued to edit the film during a cross-country train journey. Now it finally was ready to be seen.

To describe that first screening as a disaster would be wrong, for many of those who remained until the end knew they had seen one of the greatest films ever made. But not everyone remained. Rock Hudson stalked down the aisle, complaining, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?'' There were many other walkouts, and some restlessness at the film's slow pace (Kubrick immediately cut about 17 minutes, including a pod sequence that essentially repeated another one).

The film did not provide the clear narrative and easy entertainment cues the audience expected. The closing sequences, with the astronaut inexplicably finding himself in a bedroom somewhere beyond Jupiter, were baffling. The overnight Hollywood judgment was that Kubrick had become derailed, that in his obsession with effects and set pieces, he had failed to make a movie.

What he had actually done was make a philosophical statement about man's place in the universe, using images as those before him had used words, music or prayer. And he had made it in a way that invited us to contemplate it -- not to experience it vicariously as entertainment, as we might in a good conventional science-fiction film, but to stand outside it as a philosopher might, and think about it.

The film falls into several movements. In the first, prehistoric apes, confronted by a mysterious black monolith, teach themselves that bones can be used as weapons, and thus discover their first tools. I have always felt that the smooth artificial surfaces and right angles of the monolith, which was obviously made by intelligent beings, triggered the realization in an ape brain that intelligence could be used to shape the objects of the world.

The bone is thrown into the air and dissolves into a space shuttle (this has been called the longest flash-forward in the history of the cinema). We meet Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester), en route to a space station and the moon. This section is willfully anti-narrative; there are no breathless dialogue passages to tell us of his mission. Instead, Kubrick shows us the minutiae of the flight: the design of the cabin, the details of in-flight service, the effects of zero gravity.

Then comes the docking sequence, with its waltz, and for a time even the restless in the audience are silenced, I imagine, by the sheer wonder of the visuals. On board, we see familiar brand names, we participate in an enigmatic conference among the scientists of several nations, we see such gimmicks as a videophone and a zero-gravity toilet.

The sequence on the moon (which looks as real as the actual video of the moon landing a year later) is a variation on the film's opening sequence. Man is confronted with a monolith, just as the apes were, and is drawn to a similar conclusion: This must have been made. And as the first monolith led to the discovery of tools, so the second leads to the employment of man's most elaborate tool: the spaceship Discovery, employed by man in partnership with the artificial intelligence of the onboard computer, named HAL 9000.

Life onboard the Discovery is presented as a long, eventless routine of exercise, maintenance checks and chess games with HAL. Only when the astronauts fear that HAL's programming has failed does a level of suspense emerge; their challenge is somehow to get around HAL, which has been programmed to believe, “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.'' Their efforts lead to one of the great shots in the cinema, as the men attempt to have a private conversation in a space pod, and HAL reads their lips. The way Kubrick edits this scene so that we can discover what HAL is doing is masterful in its restraint: He makes it clear, but doesn't insist on it. He trusts our intelligence.

Later comes the famous “star gate'' sequence, a sound and light journey in which astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) travels through what we might now call a wormhole into another place, or dimension, that is unexplained. At journey's end is the comfortable bedroom suite in which he grows old, eating his meals quietly, napping, living the life (I imagine) of a zoo animal who has been placed in a familiar environment. And then the Star Child.

There is never an explanation of the other race that presumably left the monoliths and provided the star gate and the bedroom. “2001'' lore suggests Kubrick and Clarke tried and failed to create plausible aliens. It is just as well. The alien race exists more effectively in negative space: We react to its invisible presence more strongly than we possibly could to any actual representation.

“2001: A Space Odyssey'' is in many respects a silent film. There are few conversations that could not be handled with title cards. Much of the dialogue exists only to show people talking to one another, without much regard to content (this is true of the conference on the space station). Ironically, the dialogue containing the most feeling comes from HAL, as it pleads for its “life'' and sings “Daisy.''

The film creates its effects essentially out of visuals and music. It is meditative. It does not cater to us, but wants to inspire us, enlarge us. Nearly 30 years after it was made, it has not dated in any important detail, and although special effects have become more versatile in the computer age, Trumbull's work remains completely convincing -- more convincing, perhaps, than more sophisticated effects in later films, because it looks more plausible, more like documentary footage than like elements in a story.

Only a few films are transcendent, and work upon our minds and imaginations like music or prayer or a vast belittling landscape. Most movies are about characters with a goal in mind, who obtain it after difficulties either comic or dramatic. “2001: A Space Odyssey'' is not about a goal but about a quest, a need. It does not hook its effects on specific plot points, nor does it ask us to identify with Dave Bowman or any other character. It says to us: We became men when we learned to think. Our minds have given us the tools to understand where we live and who we are. Now it is time to move on to the next step, to know that we live not on a planet but among the stars, and that we are not flesh but intelligence.

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Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570510)

Ebert re-visited the film in 1997 and wrote this as part of his "Classic Movies" series of reviews.

Again, my thanks. My stubborn rejected of popular culture in my youth kept me from reading pieces by then-famous critics and these are in fact the first widely-published film reviews I've ever read - and I am quite impressed.

By the time I shed (at least a layer) of my social isolation and opened myself up to elements of mass media (and to published criticisms) it was 2012 and my access point to media (the web) flooded me with amateur crit work from blogs and b-movie crowd-sourced review sites. Metacritic has replaced the crowned kings of criticism.

But the two pieces you shared were insightful, well-composed, and informative. I'm now curious to read more of this caliber.

Thanks again!

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Originally Posted by innerspaceboy (Post 1570553)

But the two pieces you shared were insightful, well-composed, and informative. I'm now curious to read more of this caliber.

Well, Ebert did win a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. I love the guy and still mourn his passing.

A good place to start.

Great Movies | Roger Ebert

Enjoy 2001: A Space Odyssey!

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Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570560)

Well, Ebert did win a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. I love the guy and still mourn his passing.

A good place to start.

Great Movies | Roger Ebert

Enjoy 2001: A Space Odyssey!

He was a great man.
I didn't necessarily agree with all his reviews, but they were always insightful and prepared you for what was to come.
And he did have a wonderful taste overall.
Deciding whether I want to watch a particular movie has become much harder since he died.

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Originally Posted by grindy (Post 1570562)

The worst I ever disagreed with him was with Fight Club. He totally blew that one.

You've seen "Life Itself" right? Would love to hear your thoughts on that.

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Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570564)

The worst I ever disagreed with him was with Fight Club. He totally blew that one.

You've seen "Life Itself" right? Would love to hear your thoughts on that.

I haven't.
I'm not big on documentaries, although this one should be worth watching.

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Originally Posted by grindy (Post 1570566)

I haven't.
I'm not big on documentaries, although this one should be worth watching.

Have tissues close by. It's so well done and incredibly insightful. His relationship with Siskel was the very definition of Love/Hate. But in the end it was all a very deep love.

Hey Chula, this discussion was pretty fun! Do you want to have another, with a different movie?

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Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570564)

The worst I ever disagreed with him was with Fight Club. He totally blew that one.

I just read his review, and yeah, he missed the point. It's like he understands what the movie is trying to say, but just doesn't like all the violence or the types of people he feels would enjoy the movie, so he misinterprets it out of spite.

I don't see Fight Club as being about any kind of philosophy. It doesn't have any answers, it just expresses the irreconcilable differences between primal male psychology and modern life: modern society castrates a man's urges toward violence and action (there's a reason we play football and Call of Duty), but when they give themselves fully to "masculinity", they become slaves to their new hunter/gatherer lifestyle just as much as they were before. The movie doesn't even really take sides, or suggest a solution, it just expresses frustration.

And when you find out that the author is gay, it kind of adds another element.

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Originally Posted by The Batlord (Post 1570623)

Pretty much.

To be fair, though, most of the young guys who like the movie are a bunch of meathead morons who miss the point.

P.S. In a little less than a couple of weeks, we have proto-metal in the Metal Album Survivor thread. Zeppelin, Sabbath, UFO, etc. I expect you to show up when the time comes.

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Originally Posted by The Batlord (Post 1570650)

To be fair, though, most of the young guys who like the movie are a bunch of meathead morons who miss the point.

Ugggghhhh, I hate when people miss the point of this film. That being said, I don't think the film is a masterpiece anymore. I do however think it's a very unique film, featuring very unique performances, directed by a very unique man. Like, that film is just gorgeous. The twist never really resonated well with me. I feel there are better twist endings out there. The amount of detail in the film though under the skin that leads up to that twist though? Brilliant.

I'll always love the film but I realize it's not a masterpiece of American cinema. It's just a really f*cking well made film.

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Originally Posted by Oriphiel (Post 1570585)

Hey Chula, this discussion was pretty fun! Do you want to have another, with a different movie?

Changing the title to Kubrick. Let's do The Shining next.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord (Post 1570650)

P.S. In a little less than a couple of weeks, we have proto-metal in the Metal Album Survivor thread. Zeppelin, Sabbath, UFO, etc. I expect you to show up when the time comes.

I'll be there with bells on!

The Shining.

Based on the trailer people were foaming at the mouth waiting to see this movie.

We saw it in a packed theater and to say it was a let down was an understatement. People were all murmuring how much it sucked as they left the theater. The critics ravaged the flick in the papers and box office numbers quickly went down.

Today I consider it one of the greatest movies ever made and a lot of the same critics that hated it in 1980, now consider it a horror masterpiece.

Again, let's turn to Roger Ebert.

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Stanley Kubrick's cold and frightening "The Shining" challenges us to decide: Who is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust? In the opening scene at a job interview, the characters seem reliable enough, although the dialogue has a formality that echoes the small talk on the space station in "2001." We meet Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a man who plans to live for the winter in solitude and isolation with his wife and son. He will be the caretaker of the snowbound Overlook Hotel. His employer warns that a former caretaker murdered his wife and two daughters, and committed suicide, but Jack reassures him: "You can rest assured, Mr. Ullman, that's not gonna happen with me. And as far as my wife is concerned, I'm sure she'll be absolutely fascinated when I tell her about it. She's a confirmed ghost story and horror film addict."

Do people talk this way about real tragedies? Will his wife be absolutely fascinated? Does he ever tell her about it? Jack, wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) move into the vast hotel just as workers are shutting it down for the winter; the chef, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) gives them a tour, with emphasis on the food storage locker ("You folks can eat up here a whole year and never have the same menu twice"). Then they're alone, and a routine begins: Jack sits at a typewriter in the great hall, pounding relentlessly at his typewriter, while Wendy and Danny put together a version of everyday life that includes breakfast cereal, toys and a lot of TV. There is no sense that the three function together as a loving family.

Danny: Is he reliable? He has an imaginary friend named Tony, who speaks in a lower register of Danny's voice. In a brief conversation before the family is left alone, Hallorann warns Danny to stay clear of Room 237, where the violence took place, and he tells Danny they share the "shining," the psychic gift of reading minds and seeing the past and future. Danny tells Dick that Tony doesn't want him to discuss such things. Who is Tony? "A little boy who lives in my mouth."

Tony seems to be Danny's device for channeling psychic input, including a shocking vision of blood spilling from around the closed doors of the hotel elevators. Danny also sees two little girls dressed in matching outfits; although we know there was a two-year age difference in the murdered children, both girls look curiously old. If Danny is a reliable witness, he is witness to specialized visions of his own that may not correspond to what is actually happening in the hotel.

That leaves Wendy, who for most of the movie has that matter-of-fact banality that Shelley Duvall also conveyed in Altman's "3 Women." She is a companion and playmate for Danny, and tries to cheer Jack until he tells her, suddenly and obscenely, to stop interrupting his work. Much later, she discovers the reality of that work, in one of the movie's shocking revelations. She is reliable at that moment, I believe, and again toward the end when she bolts Jack into the food locker after he turns violent.

But there is a deleted scene from "The Shining" (1980) that casts Wendy's reliability in a curious light. Near the end of the film, on a frigid night, Jack chases Danny into the labyrinth on the hotel grounds. His son escapes, and Jack, already wounded by a baseball bat, staggers, falls and is seen the next day, dead, his face frozen into a ghastly grin. He is looking up at us from under lowered brows, in an angle Kubrick uses again and again in his work. Here is the deletion, reported by the critic Tim Dirks: "A two-minute explanatory epilogue was cut shortly after the film's premiere. It was a hospital scene with Wendy talking to the hotel manager; she is told that searchers were unable to locate her husband's body."

If Jack did indeed freeze to death in the labyrinth, of course his body was found -- and sooner rather than later, since Dick Hallorann alerted the forest rangers to serious trouble at the hotel. If Jack's body was not found, what happened to it? Was it never there? Was it absorbed into the past, and does that explain Jack's presence in that final photograph of a group of hotel partygoers in 1921? Did Jack's violent pursuit of his wife and child exist entirely in Wendy's imagination, or Danny's, or theirs?

The one observer who seems trustworthy at all times is Dick Hallorann, but his usefulness ends soon after his midwinter return to the hotel. That leaves us with a closed-room mystery: In a snowbound hotel, three people descend into versions of madness or psychic terror, and we cannot depend on any of them for an objective view of what happens. It is this elusive open-endedness that makes Kubrick's film so strangely disturbing.

Yes, it is possible to understand some of the scenes of hallucination. When Jack thinks he is seeing other people, there is always a mirror present; he may be talking with himself. When Danny sees the little girls and the rivers of blood, he may be channeling the past tragedy. When Wendy thinks her husband has gone mad, she may be correct, even though her perception of what happens may be skewed by psychic input from her son, who was deeply scarred by his father's brutality a few years earlier. But what if there is no body at the end?

Kubrick was wise to remove that epilogue. It pulled one rug too many out from under the story. At some level, it is necessary for us to believe the three members of the Torrance family are actually residents in the hotel during that winter, whatever happens or whatever they think happens.

Those who have read Stephen King's original novel report that Kubrick dumped many plot elements and adapted the rest to his uses. Kubrick is telling a story with ghosts (the two girls, the former caretaker and a bartender), but it isn't a "ghost story," because the ghosts may not be present in any sense at all except as visions experienced by Jack or Danny.

The movie is not about ghosts but about madness and the energies it sets loose in an isolated situation primed to magnify them. Jack is an alcoholic and child abuser who has reportedly not had a drink for five months but is anything but a "recovering alcoholic." When he imagines he drinks with the imaginary bartender, he is as drunk as if he were really drinking, and the imaginary booze triggers all his alcoholic demons, including an erotic vision that turns into a nightmare. We believe Hallorann when he senses Danny has psychic powers, but it's clear Danny is not their master; as he picks up his father's madness and the story of the murdered girls, he conflates it into his fears of another attack by Jack. Wendy, who is terrified by her enraged husband, perhaps also receives versions of this psychic output. They all lose reality together. Yes, there are events we believe: Jack's manuscript, Jack locked in the food storage room, Jack escaping, and the famous "Here's Johnny!" as he hatchets his way through the door. But there is no way, within the film, to be sure with any confidence exactly what happens, or precisely how, or really why.

Kubrick delivers this uncertainty in a film where the actors themselves vibrate with unease. There is one take involving Scatman Crothers that Kubrick famously repeated 160 times. Was that "perfectionism," or was it a mind game designed to convince the actors they were trapped in the hotel with another madman, their director? Did Kubrick sense that their dismay would be absorbed into their performances?

"How was it, working with Kubrick?" I asked Duvall 10 years after the experience.

"Almost unbearable," she said. "Going through day after day of excruciating work, Jack Nicholson's character had to be crazy and angry all the time. And my character had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week. I was there a year and a month. After all that work, hardly anyone even criticized my performance in it, even to mention it, it seemed like. The reviews were all about Kubrick, like I wasn't there."

Like she wasn't there.

One other note on 2001. Kubrick's ending is grand but leaves you wondering what happens after the Star Child arrives at earth.

In the book Clarke explains that Star Child detonates all of the orbiting bombs. Earth detects his presence and gets the message to stop with all of the weapons and war posturing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570664)

Man. Don't **** with KISS.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570655)

Changing the title to Kubrick. Let's do The Shining next.

I'm on it! It's about time that I got around to watching that movie (since I've only ever seen small snippets of it, years ago). I'll watch it tomorrow.

Be sure to watch for the dual and sometimes triple narratives going on. That and impossible windows.....

Ta da! If you don't feel like reading it (and I can't blame you, I typed way too much), basically I really enjoyed The Shining, and only have one complaint (which I talk about in the second to last paragraph, if you're curious). Also, I just went through and edited out a bunch of errors and misspelled names (man, I wonder how I got Doug Bradley out of Delbert Grady :laughing:).

Alright, I watched the movie. It's pretty great! I love the imagery and symbolism, especially the color red (which pops up everywhere. In fact, one of the most tense and important scenes takes place in a room that is completely red). In a way, it's different from 2001 in that it's not nearly as ambiguous. Pretty early on, the movie lets you know that there are indeed supernatural forces at play, with two characters conversing using psychic powers. There are also parts in the movie that make it pretty clear that the ghosts are real, like when Delbert Grady helps Jack out of the pantry by unlocking it from the outside (something Jack probably couldn't have done on his own), and when Danny's encounter with the lady in the bathtub leaves him bruised. Also, Wendy sees two ghosts in a room near the end of the movie, despite neither of her family members having ever told her about the ghosts and visions. But at the same, there really is a lot left to interpretation. Lines like (and i'm paraphrasing, so sorry if I mistype the quotes) "I've always been here, just as you've always been here", "You're money isn't good here, Mr. Torrance", and "Well i'm the kinda guy who likes to know who's buying his drinks!" can mean anything that you're imagination can come up with, from Jack being a puppet of a specific evil force, or being possessed, or being forced into repeating the actions of the past, or maybe even just going insane. The movie gives multiple hints as to what exactly is going on, leading to different possibilities. The first is that the dark events that have happened in the past at the Overlook Hotel have created a sort of impression on the area, which causes the people who enter the hotel to live out the events (such as, an axe murder from years prior). Dick first hints at this when he's explaining to Danny why he's cautious of the hotel; to paraphrase, he says that certain events leave a residue, like burn marks on a piece of toast, and that stumbling unto that residue can be a very dangerous thing. In this scenario, the ghosts of the hotel aren't really evil, they're simply following their roles as they're stuck in the loop, becoming apart of the residue.

Another possibility is that the ghosts of the hotel are evil, and the dark events of the past have caused many ghosts to be concentrated in that area (after all, it was built on a Native American burial ground during a time of bloodshed), possibly acting independently or under the orders of some more powerful entity. When you look at and listen to the ghosts, you immediately see that they're incredibly ominous, but also rigid and almost completely void of emotion (until Delbert Grady pops up near the very end, smiling, with blood on his face). Their demeanor makes them seem like they could just as easily be under orders as they could be acting on their own, or (as suggested earlier) stuck in a time loop. Their words also constantly make hints at each of those scenarios.

You could also come to the conclusion that the hotel itself is an evil entity, and the events of the past have given out so much emotion and energy that it in some way gave the hotel sentience, which isn't too far fetched, since the movie plays the loud sound of a heartbeat during many key moments in the hotel, and one character (I think it was Dick) mentions something about how some places simply "have a life of their own". This makes a strange kind of sense, and it comes with the implication that the ghosts are victims of the hotel, trapped (as the ending suggests, with the picture) and forced to be it's pawns. Maybe the house needs them to continue living? Maybe it is simply acting in the same twisted kind of way that someone with cabin fever gets? After all, if you were alive and alone for many months out of the year, wouldn't you want some pawns to play with (calling back to that freaky "Play with us!" line)? And then when someone threatens you, by say trying to burn you down, or maybe bringing someone with strong psychic powers that can immediately tell that you're evil, wouldn't you "correct them"?

My personal interpretation was that the events of the movie weren't so much about the ghosts, it was more about Jack. I don't know why, but I really got the feeling that he had "the shining" just as his son Danny did. Dick mentions that he and his grandmother both used to talk using only their minds, but also mentions that the shining is very rare, which makes it seem like it's quite possibly something that's hereditary, and passed down. He then says something else that is absolutely key in this scenario: that of all the people who have the gift, many of them will live out their lives without ever even knowing that they had it. The reason that Jack and Danny were so vulnerable to the hotel is that they both had a psychic connection to the events that had befallen it (after all, Dick mentions that people with the shining can see the past and the future). But that raises another question: if there's an alter-ego that reveals things to Danny, is there one that does the same thing to Jack? Dick doesn't seem to have one, but then again, he himself admits that the shining is something that is complicated; if some people don't even realize they have it, isn't it possible for others to have much more depth and complexity to their powers then others? Maybe the alter-ego is just another layer to the shining, one that Dick never reached. But why wouldn't he have reached it? Well, remember early in the movie, when Wendy mentions that Danny's alter ego appeared after Jack dislocated his shoulder? Maybe a traumatic event is what triggers someone's inner powers to the point of having an alter ego.

Consider if Jack's shining was compressed and hidden in his psyche. Nothing ever stimulated his powers, and he never realized they even existed. However, they eventually awoke, possibly from when he injured his son (which he makes very clear was something that devastated him, especially since he seems very defensive over whether he meant to hurt him or not, making it seem like he in his anger did in fact mean to injure Danny). Or maybe it was when he came to the hotel, and the sheer amount of terrible events that had happened there overwhelmed his latent powers, causing them to awaken. Remember when Danny says that his alter ego shows him the future/past in his dreams? Doesn't Jack also see the future in one of his dreams, when he sees himself murdering his family with an axe? I think he wasn't seeing the future; he was seeing the past, his powers forcing him to live through the event through Delbert Grady's eyes. His sense of shame over what he had done to his son caused him to substitute Delbert's family for his own.

Another thing to consider is that Danny's alter-ego pops up every now and then, talking with a different voice and personality than Danny. After arriving at the hotel, Jack occasionally turns into seemingly another person, being incredibly angry and violent at random intervals. The most important thing to consider is this: there is a point in the movie where Danny's alter-ego takes his body over completely, while a heart is beating in the background. At this point, Jack also seems to let his angry persona take him over completely. Is it possible that the heart beat wasn't the house coming to life, but Jack's buried alter-ego finally coming to life?

Even though this is my interpretation, I still recognize that it's kind of full of holes. What exactly was going on when he was at the bar talking to the ghosts? How did Jack get out of the freezer if there really weren't any malevolent ghosts, only images of the past? How did Danny get bruised? One answer is that Jack's powers, combined with his tremendous guilt and the residue of past events left in the house, built the ghosts out of bricks from the past. Maybe he was in control the whole time (or, at least, his subconcious/alter ego was), and he built the scenario as a way of venting his uncontrollable frustrations. His conversations with the ghosts was really him having a conversation with himself, and his alter ego (which makes the whole "I like to know who's paying for my drinks" thing kind of dark, as he himself is the host). Maybe the shining allows thoughts and ideas to take form, which would explain how the pantry door opened, and how Danny was bruised (right, coincidentally enough, when Jack was dreaming about attacking and killing him. Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, was he dreaming when Danny came downstairs? I think I mixed up the scene with when he was dreaming earlier, and Wendy woke him up. Eh, it just means that I have to watch the movie again :laughing:).

But maybe the best answer is that it's all of the above in a weird mix. Maybe the house had a life of it's own, there really were ghosts, and things were exasperated by Danny's (and possibly Jack's) powers. That would explain everything from the door, to the bruise, to the photograph at the end. Even for a pretty straightforward film, Kubrick always finds a way to let the audience come up with dozens of explanations for just what exactly was going on. And yes, there's also the possibility that none of the above explanations are correct, and that the whole family was simply affected by cabin fever, making the whole movie a jumble of the various perspectives of twisted minds.

There is only one thing that I disliked about the movie; the soundtrack, and the musical ques. They really weren't horrible, and on the contrary were both creepy and influential, but they too often burst their way into very tense and delicate moments. I think the suspense caused by the dialogue was more than enough to freak people out, and the music just kind of blares up as if telling us when we should be scared (like a horror movie's version of a laugh track). If there's a version out there with no music (save for the phonograph music that plays when the ghosts are around), I'd love to see it, because I think it'd be much more intense and realistic.

Anyway, that's my two cents on The Shining. There's probably someone out there with a much better explanation for the whole "Jack having the shining" theory, and others out there who have theories born from details that I never even noticed (Edit: I looked it up, and yeah, a whole bunch of people have already talked about Jack possibly shining, eventually passing it on to Danny). It really is a great movie, even (or maybe especially) for people who usually avoid the genre and prefer dramas. The amount of detail and imagery definitely warrant multiple viewings, and while the movie probably won't scare any horror movie fans into having nightmares, it'll definitely give you a sense of tense curiosity that almost forces you to watch intently until the end (which is strange, considering that it's movie with little action, little characterization, sparse dialogue, and a total body count of two).

Great write up.

I gotta admit that I've analyzed The Shining to death. Have read countless essays on it. Studied every expert and novice synopsis I can find. I've even watched a version of the movie where it's played backwards and forwards at the same time superimposed on top of each other.

The Shining is Kubrick's greatest mind f*ck film of all time - by a very wide margin. At various times throughout the movie he is exploring one or more of the following topics:

1. A simple haunted house story.
2. Sexual molestation and abuse.
3. The genocide of the American Indians.
4. The Nazi's extermination of the Jews.
5. Apollo moon landing conspiracies.
6. Alcoholism.
7. Insanity.

There's tons to discuss with this one. Let's start with the hotel itself. Did you spot the impossible windows? There's two that stand out pretty blatantly. When Jack gets interviewed there's a window behind Ullman with the sun blazing through it. But if you watch carefully when he's giving them a tour of the place you'll notice that his office is in the middle of the hotel - behind that wall is actually a hallway.

Then there's the scene where Danny goes up to their apt. to get his truck and sees Jack sitting on the bed staring out a window. But then later we see Danny escaping from the bathroom window and realize that that window couldn't be there because the bathroom was the only room that was adjacent to an outside wall.

There's a ton of other stuff like this that Kubrick put in to sublimely mess with your head. Basically he created a hotel that didn't make any sense when viewed as a whole. More to follow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chula Vista (Post 1570655)

Changing the title to Kubrick. Let's do The Shining next.

I'll be there with bells on!

I recommend just making it a Stanley Kubrick General Discussion thread.