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December book club canceled. Short stories instead!
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1145119
I know most of us have seen it, but if you haven't (or it's been a very long time), this is your assignment this weekend. Watching this film with the reverence that it deserves will leave a lasting impression on you.
I'm not sure I agree it doesn't tell a compelling story. For me it did, but just on a very large scale about humanity as such rather than about the adventures of Dr. Bowman or HAL or anything else that might be on a more conventional scale.
That said, I'm also looking for compelling narratives in David Lynch movies, so I might not be an authority on this.
I suspect there is a lot one could glean from the story on a personal level, but after having finished it I didn't feel like I have learned anything new about the world, society or myself. It's highly possible that I missed the point or moral of the story they were going for. It was definitely an experience to remember though.
I guess it's very much open for interpretation.
For me it was a story about humanity, told from the somewhat optimistic perspective of the 1960s space age. The monkey learning to use a tool is the starting point of humanity. We then jump to a 2001 where the space age never ended. Human kind is finally leaving earth, and in the process we are abandoning what we were and reinventing ourselves as something else. Just like the monkey did when it became us by using tools.
Bowman on his dying bed represents the end of human kind itself as we know it. The space fetus is the galactic rebirth of human kind - the movie begins as it ends, with a metaphorical birth.
It becomes the story of how the space age will redefine humanity in the same way tools redefined apes. The space Odyssey is the journey that started with the monkey learning to use a tool, and ending with human kind leaving earth.
But that's my interpretation. It's possible I was a bit too enthusiastic after leaving the theatre.
I think seeing this movie in theaters in the 60s would have a drastically different impression on me. Being in my 30s I obviously wasn't alive when this movie was released. I have seen so many other wonderously imaginative works of science fiction leading up to having seen this one a few years ago. It is difficult for me to imagine this movie, which still holds up today, as being one of my first introductions into the genre in a time where such visuals and concepts were not really a thing yet.
the book makes some of the themes a bit more obvious. the film adaptation left a lot to be desired (though, like you, I'm in my thirties and never saw it in theater.)