2001 A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick (1968)

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A well-known science fiction movies, very important and formerly known and seen by almost everyone, even many times. Now, not so much partially because a real big screen is needed to appreciate it and because a focused and comprehensive vision is needed
to capture images, sounds and sensations, rather than understand completely the story.
The film had also a great importance in the evolution of musical taste, raising the focus on classical music that became almost a mass phenomenon during the seventies. For this we want to comment on the famous soundtrack.
But what have been the topics of this famous film? We try to do a summary.

 

1. Men-apes
The monolith, legacy to the man of higher entities, possibly alien, or symbol of the still unexplained mystery of the conquest of thought, is revealed, and it gives to the men-apes the first and fundamental information to improve their level of knowledge: the war.

2. From bone to the ship
Through a long series of wars and upheavals man has got to the point of exit from the bond of earth and gravity, and finally to live in safety.


3. The war is a distant memory, Russians and Americans work together peacefully, while still competing.

4. The discovery
In the first step in his conquest of space, out of his home planet the man meets the second monolith: a sentinel left by the entities above, the sensor that can signal when the man reached the second stage of its development: the ability to expand into space.

5. The second contact
Now the man of the third millennium has come into contact with the meteorite - sentinel, the circle is unbroken.

6. The trip to Jupiter
Jupiter is the planet towards which the electromagnetic beam of meteorite is headed. The man, not yet turned in on itself as in the eighties onwards, can not stop the desire to know, and 18 months later he builds a great spaceship.

7. The expedition, which will require a one year trip to arrive at destination, is directed to the place of the space that has left the sensor on the outskirts of our planet, the largest planet in the solar system and its satellites.

8. The crew
Two components are simple riders, their task is to reach the goal, they do not know the real reason of the trip, for them is a continuation of the program of solar system exploration; the other three are hibernating, they are aware of the secret and they are in charge to reveal it or to obtain useful evidence, arrived at their destination. They were prudently hibernated after being informed and conditioned at the start, in order not to influence the riders, or not influence each other or create any problems during a long trip a year.

9. The Computer
The man, still confident in the technology because he has not yet experienced Microsoft operating systems, realizes that for so great a challenge he has to extend his cognitive and analytical abilities, and relies on the most perfect and powerful electronic computer ever built , HAL 9000, to which he also broadcasts his ability to develop the thought in every direction.

10. The fight for survival
As in chess, where the computer still can not beat the masters, why not be able to use lateral thinking, the pilot David, not the captain who had just lost a symbolic chess game with Hal, manages to overtake and turn off the computer, reducing it to a vegetative state.

11. The arrival at destination
Now it makes no sense to return back, return path is now precluded, without the help of the onboard computer and no other crew members; now aware of the secret, the last surviving astronaut starts the final exploration, or maybe it's really this one the way to come back.

12. The road opens
The spacecraft arrives at the door in the sky that opens and drains faster, he has arrived at a suburban station left over by the alien entities, where may be disclosed to him answers to questions that man has never been able to find, provided by the meteorite that symbolically is floating in the space next to him.

13. The origin of the universe: the big bang

14. The creation of galaxies

15. The creation of stars and planets

16. The end of the life cycle of a star: a supernova

17. The gaseous clusters, witnesses of stars' cemeteries, but cradle for the generation of new stars and planets

18. Life
But there is an even bigger mystery, the cycle of life and death. Odysseus has finished his long journey, his Odyssey, and he has returned home. And the iconic house, home of man, shell, without which no man is a man (homeless). The astronaut can watch as if he's on the other side of the mirror the phases of his life cycle, until the final one; on his deathbed, still looking for an answer, and the meteorite is there before him, to provide it, maybe.

19. The infinite loop
And the answer is the total penetration between the life cycle and the cycle of the universe, the entire our planet that is home for us is big and counts as a fetus in which life is forming, our source and origin of everything, without which the universe would be meaningless because no one could understand it, life is an endless cycle just as the universe continues to expand, through the relentless cycle of the creation and the end of stars and planets.

 

Soundtrack Listing

 

Title

Author

 Notes

Also Sprach Zarathustra

Richard Strauss

Beginning of the film: the dawn of man and the discovery of the monolith. A very powerful symphonic piece, especially in the grand opening phases, which thanks to the inclusion in this soundtrack will become a classic (it was not known so widely before) to even be reinterpreted as a jazz piece by Eumir Deodato, in a famous rash but successful musical works.

Il Danubio blu

Johann Strauss

Satellites and spaceships move elegantly in the space around the Earth, accompanied by Strauss waltzes of another Strauss, the music accompaniment (timeless and celebrated each new year) of an ordered and perfect world, the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Requiem

Gyorgy Ligeti

Head for the (second) appearance of the monolith on the moon.

Jupiter and Beyond

Gyorgy Ligeti

The descent into the excavation until closer to the monolith.

Atmospheres

Gyorgy Ligeti

Interlude: while they are examining the monolith.

Jupiter and Beyond

Gyorgy Ligeti

The monolith floating in the space.

Il Danubio blu

Johann Strauss

Final scenes. The two worlds: space and life.

Gayaneh Ballet Suite

Aram Khachaturyan

Credits

Lux Aeterna

Gyorgy Ligeti

Credits

 

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 © Alberto Truffi Novembre 2010 / Music Graffiti

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