Cain47

I'm always surprised, given that the famous title track of 2001 is called "Also sprach Zarathustra", that nobody (nobody I've read, anyway) has noted the parallels between the movie and Nietzsche's famous work, "Also sprach Zarathustra". The idea of man's rebirth into a star child; an infant form of an indescribably more advanced being, is an explicit part of N.'s "Zarathustra"; there is a prominent passage called "On how a camel becomes a lion, and a lion becomes a child", in which N. describes the first incarnation of the overman as a child, transcending both the ascetic, altruistic side of man (the camel; always asking to bear more weight) and the rapacious, brutish, will-to-power side of man (the lion). The fact that the song plays during the star child sequence can hardly be coincidence. And also, Zarathustra said that "man is a rope tied between beasts and the overman." The structure of the movie fits that description: a brief history of man as beast, until we become truly man by mastering weapons and acquiring reason, then a long sequence about man (the rope, as it were), and then a brief glimpse of the overman. The inscrutability of how these transformations occurred, and the suggestion that an external force caused them, is also Nietzschean; in "Zarathustra", he makes it pretty clear that he doesn't have a clue how people are going to be able to enact these changes themselves and suggests that we will have to depend on an outsider (Zarathustra) to show us how to "go under". Bowman's psychedelic sequence at the near-end could be seen as Kubrick's best 1960's-style attempt at depicting the mystical "going under".

I know these parallels are pretty broad, and almost certainly have been noted elsewhere despite the fact that I have not personally seen it. But I just wanted to mention them, if for no other reason than to try to dispel the myth that Nietzsche was ultimately a gloomy philosopher. Few people find the ending of 2001 to be gloomy, and it is in my opinion, explicitly and unmistakeably Nietzschean. The case could certainly be made that 2001 is above all a dramatization of "Zarathustra" updated for the modern age. Feel free to disregard the outright snobbishness of my tying everything to Nietzsche.

I know one person who agrees with me on this, but I understand I am in the severe minority. Most people I know think this movie is a great action movie, great stunts, etc. I tell them "I think it's the best movie ever made" and they say, "uh...yeah, it's very good for the genre." I mean that it is the best movie ever made. I'm not in general a huge "action" movie fan, and while the stunts are the best I've ever seen (note to young people -- this movie was made back when REAL men crashed REAL cars. there's no god damned CGI in this - you are actually seeing what people are doing). Beyond that though, this is in my opinion the most compelling cinematic version of the old archetypical story of the "shell of a man." The atmosphere created by the wasteland, "this blighted place", is I think the most vivid of any movie ever made. It is about mass, about matter, about the physics of objects - not particles but objects that break, bend, shatter. It is about WILL. A will so strong and noble that not even the actual presence of nothingness can overpower it. The villains are among the most original and fully-realized of any in film, and the hero is hollow but honorable, parasitic but strong beyond compare. I've never seen a movie in which so much is communicated with so few words. It is truly a visceral and intellectual masterpiece. It is flawless. I have seen it over 100 times and still turn it on many nights before I go to bed. By the way, if anyone out there is familiar with the concept of the "robo movie" -- accept no substitutes.

by the way -- MUST MUST MUST be seen in the original 2:35-1 format.

now, i love big action movies such as Gladiator or Braveheart despite the fact that they're corny as hell. but I must seriously consider emigration after seeing how much most of you loved this movie. it was a disgrace; a movie made for no reason other than the fact that the filmmakers thought americans were so stupid that they'd buy it anyway. if you can sit through heath ledger's girlfriend's speech to the townspeople without vomiting, you are a much stronger person than i. zero out of ten. an insulting, disgraceful reaming from hollywood.