Fifty years on, Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ still feels edgy. Maybe it has something to do with the confusing ending – but it’s impressive for a movie that says in its title that it’s set in the brave, new, space-faring world of 17 years ago.
It’s one of my favourite movies of all time. I did a poster to mark the 50th anniversary of its release.
The composition is based on the feeling of encountering something vast and mysterious. It explicitly and implicitly references a number of different things from the movie and is in part inspired by the intriguing analysis of the movie’s symbolism from Rob Ager (http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20analysis%20new.html). In it he suggests that the story of exploration and encounter with alien life is a parallel of a film character’s emergence through the fourth wall, out of the confines of the movie as medium, and encountering the audience. It makes for a very interesting read, and anyone who can make sense of Inland Empire must know a thing or two about film interpretation!
Musings 