Is "2001: A Space Odyssey" a comedy?
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
Stanley Kubrick is known for making... well... he is known primarily for making 2001: A Space Odyssey... but most of his other films are black-comedies that poke fun at some rather dark aspects of the society. Full Metal Jacket is undeniably a comedy that pokes fun at the Vietnam war. Dr. Strangelove is a comedy that pokes fun at the absurdity of nuclear weapons. Hell even Lolita is a comedy. And a very funny one at that. So in the middle of all this, Kubrick decides to make a movie about space and stuff. And makes 2001: A Space Odyssey. So is it a comedy as well? ↩ Reply
The first time I watched the film was when I was like 13 years old. I was fascinated with Steven Spielberg and somewhere, on some website, I found a list of films which Spielberg recommends people to watch. One of those films was 2001: A Space Odyssey. Based on a name, I thought that it was a movie from 2001. Not from 1968. I looked at some images of it online to see if I want to watch it. And the images looked like a kind of sci-fi film that could be shot in 2001. It had good visuals. Good looking space stuff. Good camera positions. But then I looked further into the picture and was completely and utterly shocked to learn that the film was in fact shot not in 2001, but in 1968. And the "2001" thing was a part of its title. ↩ Reply
A lot of people today find it weird to watch films like 2001. It is very slow paced. It has an extremely unorthodox structure. It has a scene in prehistoric era, before apes fully transitioned into humans. Then it cuts sharply into a version of the future, with space travel and stuff. Then it has a section with completely unrelated characters going on a "Space Odyssey" towards Jupiter, which become our main characters for the rest of the film. And it ends on some rather LSD inspired profound looking bullshit. ↩ Reply
For example, the film opens with a few minute long black screen. We hear some psychedelic music playing for us, while we are trying to debug what's wrong with the movie. Nothing's wrong. It literally starts with a few minutes of a black screen. This is intentional. ↩ Reply
As far as I want to poke fun at this kind of bullshit, this was sort of a thing back in the day. Today we binge watch films without giving a flying fuck about what we put on. But back in the 60s some films were actual events. 2001: A Space Odyssey is not the only film that opened with a few minutes of music. 1965 David Lean film Doctor Zhivago comes to mind. It also opened up with a musical prologue, where nothing happens on the screen. The idea was, to give people time to settle into their chairs in the cinema, while giving them the first taste of the atmosphere of the film they are going to watch. Doctor Zhivago used classical music and there was a colorful title card on the screen itself. 2001: A Space Odyssey had a black screen, because the atmosphere is space. And space is dark. And it had psychedelic experimental music because that is the atmosphere of the film. The movie tells you right away that it's going to be bad shit crazy. ↩ Reply
When I saw the film for the first time, the pacing was really weird. A lot of the time the film portrays things that would have been cut altogether from a modern picture. Like for example when David Bowman ( Keir Dullea ) went outside to try to fix the seaming malfunctioning piece of a radio equipment. The whole movie has little moments like this, where you are not sure why the movie is showing them. ↩ Reply
But then watching it now, after re-watching it so many times, you realize how absolutely amazing those choices are. First of all, most of this film is very subtle. It makes you either pay attention to very small interactions, or sit there and think how nonsensical it is. ↩ Reply
For example, when Bowman got out to retrieve the seemingly broken antenna, it was because their AI assistant HAL 9000 ( which is a fucking amazing joke of a name ) decided to mess with them, for them being dumb as fuck. Earlier we get a scene of another crew member Frank ( Gary Lockwood ) playing chess with HAL, and obviously losing. So HAL was like "Damn, those humans can't even win me at chess. I better get rid of them". And so almost immediately he starts bullshiting about the damn antenna, to get them into a dangerous situation. ↩ Reply
Watching it today, knowing about how AI works, and knowing about potential dangers of it, made me actually notice this progression in HAL. When he starts bullshiting I was on the edge of my seat. When Bowman goes out, the longness of the sequence builds tension. When then Frank goes out for the second time, to then get kicked into space by HAL, it was a fucking horror scene. Yes it is slow. But that's kind of the point. In space you have to move in very precise, calculated ways. And that slowness that you have to work with, builds hell of a lot of tension, when you have a situation of life and death. ↩ Reply
And then there is the second reason the movie is slow. It is designed to induce a psychedelic reaction. You watch monotonous scenes of slow-paced stuff, that kind of makes you a bit sleepy. It hypnotizes you. And then Kubrick puts you thought the light-show sequences in the end of the film. When you are slightly hypnotized, this kaleidoscope hits you like a brick and you start genuinely feel like you have taken drugs. ↩ Reply
Maybe this is a joke of sorts. You know. Maybe Kubrick's comedy brain was like "yeah, I gonna fuck them up with this movie". Because if you are looking at the film from a comedy perspective, you can see more than one very funny moments in the film. ↩ Reply
For example, when the news segment pronounces HAL which sounds like "hell", this is pure comedy gold. Or that one shot where Floyd ( William Sylvester ) is looking at long af list of rules for taking a shit in space. Like, are you fucking kidding me? I think Stanley Kubrick does kidding. It doesn't make much sense in any other context than if it is a joke in a comedy picture. ↩ Reply
Or like for example the overly-too-complex procedure of getting from Earth to the Moon. You fly to the space station in-between first. Then you take another, different space craft towards the Moon. There a special dome like thing that opens up to reveal a landing platform. That landing platform then goes down into an underground section. Then you take a third space craft from that place on the surface of the moon itself to get to the point you are interested in, in the first place. It seems like the film is lightly mocking the transportation industry. ↩ Reply
In one way the longness of the travel, with the up-beat classical music is a joke in and of itself. It is Kubrick giggling to himself the whole way through, as he faithfully recreates the monotony of travel, while making it even more absurd. It is kind of the same joke as the opening shot of a too-long-space-ship from Spaceballs. ↩ Reply
In a way the whole film is one big joke. The monolith appears in front of a bunch of monkeys. And those monkeys get horny on the monolith. Which opens their mind to new ways of committing violence. This is stupid. Then we cut from one prehistoric weapon ( the bone ) to a futuristic weapon ( the space nuke ) and the joke is: look how silly those people are. Aliens gave them inspiration. And what do they do with it? Make more weapons. And then HAL 9000 is the ultimate joke. It is Kubrick understanding the main flaw of modern LLMs. Garbage in, garbage out. If HAL 9000 was trained on humans, it is just poetically beautiful that it will also develop murderous tendencies. Like the film is asking you to scream "lol" in the cinema. ↩ Reply
You know people asked Kubrick multiple times, what was the meaning of his films. Especially people wanted to know the meaning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But he never answered. The common understand of why he never answered is that he just doesn't want the message, if there is any, to be muddled by his own interpretation. That everybody reads a piece of art from their own perspective. But I think I'm starting to understand why he never said anything about this film: The explanation would have been too silly. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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