Extremely overrated garbage film?

I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

I’ll add Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Three Times. Long shots can be fascinating

However, I have yet to find the value in Michael Snow’s Wavelength o.o Its too desperate for my tastes. I get why people like it and appreciate that but is it “most exciting film ever made”? I think not

Frank Poole jogging around the centrifuge of the Discovery’s living area, shadow-boxing, with the profoundly mournful Adagio from Khachaturian’s Gayaneh on the soundtrack…

Naw, man – you’re crazy.

+50 points to Matt for using a quote.

Sean, this conversation can serve no purpose any more. Goodbye.

2001 is meant to be a “cold” film. A “warm and fuzzy” 2001 wouldn’t work. It might be a statement on the existence of God or on our cosmological beginnings or path, but it is also a statement on technology and how it could control humans and deaden the soul. Rather prescient really. Some films shouldn’t be the way you want them to be.

Totally agree with Francis’ comment.

Sorry, Sean, but you’re just wrong on this one. I think you have to be in the right mood to watch it, can’t suffer from ADD or an incapacity to think abstract thoughts.

If none of those apply to you then watch it again some other time. It’s an incredible film.

Well, i can’t speak for everybody, but i think that the atmospheres within 2001 is brilliantly meditative and transcendental. I can’t think of many movies with such a great and hypnotizing atmosphere, perhabs besides eg. Tarkovsky, Sokurov, Lynch or Tarr.

It is a movie that is required to be felt. The story, of course, isn’t without a point. The movie is quite easy to interpret and there is a lot on Nietzsche. You know – Strauss’ Also Spracht Zarathustra is based on Nietzsches 19th century work of the same name. Zarathustra is an übermensch and the headlines of the movie is pretty much based on the übermensch thought.

Yeah, this thread is “contrarian” bollocks. “Hey, why don’t I start a thread overly criticizing an established classic based on absolutely nothing at all!”

And so, this thread was born …

:(

Kubrick is my God.
I can see why someone would hate 2001: A Space Odyssey. I, myself, have never even gotten through it without getting bored at some point. That being said, each time I’ve seen it, I can get further into it before I start to feel a bit bored. I do not rank it among my favorites (how could I?) but I think that the movie is one of the best of all time. I love each individual scene but the entire thing over 2 and a half hours has proven to be too dense for me so far (though I haven’t seen it in a year or two).

this post seems like a lot of other posts on these forums.

Here’s the formula:

OP will take respected film X and call it boring/shit/pseudo-art/pretentious/etc

people will reply saying:
A. You don’t get it because you are closed minded/ignorant
B. Take complaints about film x and point out that those things are also present in respected films Y, and Z and ask if you think that those films suck too.
C. Write a long post about why film x is brilliant and the OP just doesn’t like S style of films

OP will defend their opinions some more, people will comment more, people’s post will be taken out of context thousands of words will be written and all in all we will agree that everyone has different opinions and some films just aren’t for some people and not much else will happen.

This is almost as bad as the damn lists.

Oh and btw 2001 is amazing.

“this post seems like a lot of other posts on these forums.

Here’s the formula:

OP will take respected film X and call it boring/shit/pseudo-art/pretentious/etc

people will reply saying:
A. You don’t get it because you are closed minded/ignorant
B. Take complaints about film x and point out that those things are also present in respected films Y, and Z and ask if you think that those films suck too.
C. Write a long post about why film x is brilliant and the OP just doesn’t like S style of films

OP will defend their opinions some more, people will comment more, people’s post will be taken out of context thousands of words will be written and all in all we will agree that everyone has different opinions and some films just aren’t for some people and not much else will happen.

This is almost as bad as the damn lists.

Oh and btw 2001 is amazing."

RINSE/REPEAT

Welcome to life my friend.

You could draw some parallels with Zarathustra and 2001, easily.

2001 is generally agreed to be about the ultimate destiny of mankind. So is the Superman.

“This movie is so shallow, slow, pathetically boring and pointless….this sucks!”

Well, I suggest you refrain from re-watching it……. .thinking about it……or, gasp, taking time to post about it on an internet forum….but I suppose you have this great need to just tell everyone how you feel about it….

@Sean -
Originally I thought 2001: Space Odyssey was one of the most fantastic, philosophically dense, influential, and ambitious films ever made. Then I read your post and thought to myself, “wow, I’ve been wrong this whole time.” Let’s all praise Sean for ejaculating his brilliant opinions that everyone NEEDED to know about, all over our stupid inferior faces.

But seriously, the fact that this thread elicited responses that were not pure brutal sarcasm is shocking. As if this was the first time there has been a thread like this that was never resolved. There has been more serious academic analysis / interpreting of this film than most likely any other film any made. Of what value are your silly little denunciations? Just give it one star and move on, accepting the fact that someone sees something in the film that you do not.

I actually agree that it’s overrated, but I do like it.

so, between this and the Children Of Men thread, are you just trying to piss people off or something?

anyway, to answer your question: no. no it is not.

“But what about VALIS?”

To each his own, but seeing 2001 called a “garbage film” threw me for a loop.

?> You could draw some parallels with Zarathustra and 2001, easily.

>> 2001 is generally agreed to be about the ultimate destiny of mankind. So is the Superman.

>Nope. The Ubermensch is just the greater individual that rises above the masses every once in awhile out of the friction. Absolutely unrelated to 2001.

The Superman is quite clearly described as the great leap forward for mankind, the destiny of mankind. It’s the whole freaking point of the entire concept.

Let’s not get snide, please. If you think someone is misunderstanding Nietzsche, by all means enlighten us as to what he really meant, but don’t just tell someone “you sound so wrong to me.”

I didn’t know Nietzsche wrote about Christopher Reeve…

I love Sean’s topics, it’s always the good place to discuss about highly intellectual matters.

Underground and Sean, regarding Nietzsche: No, the übermensch isn’t the greater individual who rises above the masses. That surely is a part of the concept in relation to Nietzsches and before him Aristoteles’ ideas that wisdom implicates action and power, but fundamentally a “superman” is an individual who is capable to reject all constituted values and make up his own beyond society.

Nevertheless, the opening scene too is quite Nietzschean. It’s (of course!) the abe man advancing to modern man using a tool, which is pretty important to Nietzsches thoughts on the dionysian/apollonian spirit. Afterwards the film is centred on the fight between HAL (The creations of mankind, the apollonian spirit, the community) and human itself. With other words: its the conflict between man’s tool (the abeman becomes modern man when taking up the bone) and the individual human being – as Nietzsche would have said: the conflict between society and its individuals.

According to Nietzsche man becomes superman when he is able to break with society and create his own values. Due to this proces human beings advances to a new intellectual stage as (metaphorically) a child, given the fact that a child is pure (not influenced by society yet). This is happening when Bowman turns out to win the fight against society (HAL). Starchild ilustrates the free and pure spirit beyond “time and space”, which is a metaphor for laws and norms in society.

2001 is a Nietzschean movie, there is no doubt about that at all.

I can understand why some people like it and I have no respect for those people.

“You just didn’t get it!!!!!!!”

No, everyone gets it. It’s so painfully blunt. Find a new excuse as to why your favorite shitty film isn’t actually shitty.

Maybe we could wistfully describe more scenes about running with a poignancy the film cannot provide? “Profoundly mournful.” snicker

You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.

Hi Underground,

I’ve read ‘..Zarathustra’ a few times, plus Ecce Homo, Antichrist and Twilight of the Idols, yes.

Am I a Nietzschean scholar? No. I’m open to being corrected and don’t claim to be the ultimate authority.

I just don’t see your point of view, sorry. If I was to take the time to thoroughly explain what I mean it would be exactly what Keyser Soze wrote above.

Maybe it’s just subtle semantics being misread by me, but I didn’t see the superman as ‘some guy who just goes the extra mile now and then and achieves more then others – meh – no big deal’. The Superman is the bridge seperating what humanity has been and what humanity can become once it breaks free of the restricting shackles and values of society.