2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): Cinema’s Memorable Images–The Final Scene
The Star Child from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Photograph: Kobal
Chosen by Stephen Poliakoff
P. French: After starting out as a playwright, Poliakoff turned to writing and directing TV dramas, including Shooting the Past, Perfect Strangers and the award-winning The Lost Prince. His feature films include Hidden City and Glorious 39.
Decades later, people are arguing about the ending of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
What the ending means to the film. The computer taking over, the menacing computer howl, the fetus – it has passed into cinema folklore.
“Science fiction was not a genre that attracted me much, and it was very unsexy in the 1960s. But Kubrick’s film was the most original I had ever seen. It came at me for the first time, completely alone, in a cinema on a summer afternoon in 1968. I was 15, and it made an extraordinary impression on me. There was a lot more mainstream “auteur cinema” than there is now, Hollywood studios producing personal films. Nevertheless Kubrick stood alone, a titanic figure that obsessively made films, under great secrecy, and with nobody interfering.
I had never seen such a bold use of cinema, and certainly never such an incredibly obscure ending. To have spent all that time and money and to have the daring – some would say foolhardy daring, but nevertheless a magnificent daring – to end the film on such an elusive and obscure note, I found it amazing as a 15-year-old that anybody should have the balls to do that. It excited me and changed my whole view of what you could do as a writer, whatever medium you were attempting – Kubrick’s aspiration to be original. Now it’s been much imitated but 2001 was extraordinarily ahead of its time, and has continued to survive and influence generations.”
Source: Philip French
