Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a book for "All and None" by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche where the prophet Zarathustra proclaims to the world that God is Dead. "Also sprach Zarathustra" is a tone poem by Richard Strauss - the song. What is happening to the "ape" (when human consciousness is first formed and their first act is to make a weapon and kill each other) speaks more to the book. Zarathustra states, "Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Overman." This is our beginning, "we" are in the middle of evolution and the "ubermensch" is the end. from the book: "You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes." "What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going." A Space Odyssey is a Nietzschean film During World War 1 most German soldiers heading to the trenches had a copy of the Bible in one pocket and this book in the other. seeing a lot of Barbie comments - #Fbarbie
The music was inspired by the book! The entire book! The entire Strauss piece is 35 minutes long! And you are wrong absolutely about the German soldiers...the book was little known and gradually became more read, AND NEVER WIDELY!
It's almost odd to see this posted by a craftsman of your caliber. Makes sense though since you obviously have the heart of an artist, so it stands to reason that you would have a deep, thoughtful understanding of it's meaning. I often come back to this piece, specifically the performance by the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan. It's available on here, though the DVD or Blu-Ray is worth the purchase for the sound quality. Kubrick actually chose this piece for 2001 after hearing Karajan's recording. I find the very end of the tone poem to be so moving because of how delicate and innocent it sounds (to me). Reminds me of Leonard Cohen's lyric of "Dance me to the children who are asking to be born". The very end of Strauss' tone poem makes me think of a soul (consciousness) trying to will itself into being. I'm just an amateur violinist, but I use it as a way to actively engage with and hopefully better understand works like this. To me you're similar to a great luthier, so you have all my respect. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it, and your work is absolutely breathtaking. Cheers, mate.
@@kullervo2844 I apreciate this comment and your insights especially "of a soul trying to will itself into being" very profound. I'm looking into Karajan. btw I have 2 degrees in philosphy and have studied Nietzsche and others extensivly. lol. Violonist, that's awesome, I play guitar and collect Gibsons, i wish I were a luthier
@@thumperpaul155 yeah, they could be dipped in poison and placed on some one's tongue,,,soo.. really anything can be weaponized. In fact wasn't that how people used to "drop acid".......
I saw this when it came out. I was a kid. People left the theatre very quietly when it was over. No one had ever seen anything like it and no one was sure what had happened at the end. My father took me to see it and we went with some of his friends. They and my father all worked at NASA.
From what I understand via Kubrick's wife in an interview, Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke were extremely pleased with how accurately they anticipated a lot of the technology of the day (when NASA put out promotional films on their equipment & expertise).
@@danielstone9404 Arthur C. Clarke was a bonafide genius in reading scientific and societal trends. He anticipated a lot of stuff. Several sci-fi writers did, but he was particularly impressive, IMHO. It should also be noted that the process works both ways, tho. Several modern technologies were inspired by sci-fi. Cell phones, for example.
My older brother and his friend took me a 13 year old kid to the first showing at a downtown theater. 70 mm, 3 screens, 3rd row balcony......Magnificent.
You better believe that when people first saw this, and this particular scene (among others), it blew their minds. Kubrick was a genius, and this is one of my favorite films of all time.
@paul w Pretty funny dude. I mean, really funny. This film has been hailed by many as among the most brilliant of all time, and unique among all science fiction films, and your viewpoint is your own. I stand by my original statement. It blew people's mins. No, they didn't understand it. Maybe they still don't. Do you?
@Canis Lupus I get it. As a 12 year old kid I was totally dazzled but also totally baffled. After watching it numerous times, and in the context of a lifetime of investigation, it is certainly one of my favorite films.
@paul w I understand your point but it came across as quite disparaging. I know a lot about this film and its production ... and more than just that. I said this scene blew people's minds, and I don't think that warranted such a dismissive comment about how people didn't like the movie. Maybe they didn't. The scene blew their fricking minds, HAL blew their minds, the ending blew their minds. I think that's a fair statement, and I'm not shy about "the public domain" particularly in this age of overt "political correctness' about any opinion offered.
@Canis Lupus The ending, and the movie in general, deals with the evolution of pre-human to super-human (the fetus at the end is astronaut Dave Bowman, reborn just in time to save the human race ... this is not obvious in the movie). The theme also deals with the evolution from just surviving extinction due to the discovery of tools/weapons, to the modern human world where that distinction remains fuzzy, and the world in spite of its dramatic technological advances is teetering on the brink. The abandonment of human control to machines (HAL the computer) proves disastrous, but you see Dave Bowman unplug that machine, plunge into a world of alien beings and even illusion (the rooms and bedrooms, ever aging old man), perhaps even into the very roots of human creation - with the ever reappearing monolith as a kind of portal, or symbol, connecting humanity with this 'other' race. All very symbolic, and magnificently produced even if still mysterious. The story to some extent could be interpreted as a telling of the ancient Babylonian and Vedic myths, where 'others' enabled early humans or pre-humans to survive instead of perish.
This film holds the record of being the "talking picture" with the longest delay between the start and the first spoken words ("Here you are, sir"). 45 minutes IIRC
The dancers like Dan Richter (Moonwatcher in this scene) who acted in the first part of the film don’t get proper credit for the unbelievable job they did. Total respect.
Yes. Tho he did spend pounds and pounds flying set directors and shrubbery from the desert to England only to not be able to use the foliage in the movie. The set designers said they did learn from the experience and made fake trees based off the real thing.
@@mridhulml9238 This depicts the moment when proto-humans discovered the ability to manipulate the world around them. It's the beginning of tools, technology, and the entire teleology of human history--hence the transition cut from the bone to the space-age technology. For the film, the bone and space tech (specifically HAL9000) are the bookends of human history, the former initiating one mode of existence for humans and the latter ultimately leading the protagonist into the next mode of existence.
An artist and visionary made this movie - so memorable, they will be watching it in 100 years. This movie set the bar for creativity and story telling.
@@hypn0298 If you haven't already, read the book. It's explained in so much more detail. The significance of the jawbone is that it is the first technological innovation by the human race (moreover, it is also, significantly, a weapon). In the book, Clarke describes how this invention, guided by the monolith, leads to innovation after innovation arriving, down the generations, at the satellite (which, according to Kubrick, is a Space borne nuclear missile station.) Do read the book. It will clarify the narrative of the film and it is quite beautifully written. "When the first faint glow of dawn crept into the cave Moon-Watcher saw that his father had died in the night. He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness." 😉
Those cuts from tool being formulated to the ultimate use of the tool in hunting has always been my favorite shot in the whole film just the implications of it all is amazing with one cut.
The people who first saw this in the cinema on release day, or better yet the first actual public premier or showing… I wonder if any of them realized they were witnessing a key moment of cinematic/cultural history…
Factually, this is not the opening scene. This is when Moonwatcher, the ape, sees the bone as a weapon. The music is heard for the first time over the opening credits. The Utah monolith pales in comparison to the one from 2001.
We learned warfare and murder of kin the moment the weapon was swung with force onto those bones..and then when it crashed down onto the other ape leader's skull..sentient genocide given breath. And slowly we just improved our ancestors aggression methods towards percieved enemies and threats over time to almost enjoyable brutal perfection. And here we are..our species in chaos..enemies to our very selves..our planetary environment burning and poisoned and dying..and..our homeworld fast becoming a bloodied desolate wasteland of mankinds perversion evils and greeds..and our behaviours placed us here. What a beautiful home we have birthed for ourselves and all other earthly life..we should be extremely proud at our accomplishments. Pointless never ending self created death. (/-\)..Proud indeed.😑
@@rogueriderhood1862 Yep..oh for a Lightspeed capable craft🚀..I'd be.."Seeya humans!..thanks fer all the horrors..Unhappy travels Cycos!..Exit Stage Left!".."Whoooooooosh..Gone!".. (/-\)..✋😆..
He sure did. And Kubrick actually had a composer create an original score for the movie. "Thus Spake Zarathustra," "Blue Danube," and every other musical piece in the film were just placeholders, the temp score that Kubrick put together for the film's early cut. It worked so well he didn't use the original score and stuck with the temp score--a great choice, it turns out.
I was very small when this film came out-about 3 years old, My mum told me the Blue Danube was the first piece of classical music I Iiked.-2001 must have been a popular film everywhere so I probably heard it because of that film! My intelligence level was probably at the same level as the chimp's! Apart from the lets see if I can kill anything with it!
Think of it: not just the period in which a species started using weapons, but the actual moment - to the second - when an individual member of that species first thinks of the idea. The implications are pretty enormous.
@Oroborus I don’t think they mean the actual cut as such, but the cut in this particular context. Not the technical qualities that define a cut between two arbitrary frames. More so are they referring to moment just before and after the cut, rather than the cut itself (that’s what I made of it at least- and I agree).
@@OroborusFMA How is it poorly done? It jumps millions of years in the future, and the implications it brings up all stay true to the themes of the story, which only get strengthened as the movie progresses. It certainly is an excellent cut
I watched this movie with my fiance, and I actually started crying during this scene... it's such a beautiful and epic scene of picture and music, even though it's basically just a monkey banging bones, awesome.
it's sooooo more than that. its not a monkey. it is our ancestor and this is the moment of consciousness. the first evolving idea "technology" soon after that came the "god" idea but technology was the first. that is what this scene is about.
Great super theme which would later be memorable as it would become the Nature Boy Ric Flair's theme song and ring entrance WOO! WOO! The man is a star above the space and clouds!
In the early ninteen-seventies, when 2001 first aired on television, my parents called everyone to watch on our living room tv. As a small child, I remember our dog searching franticly behind the TV for the monkeys."Oo-oo-aa-aa" lol.
The movie doesn't convey how long the ape-men actually spend figuring all this shit out and putting it together for themselves, which the book makes clear. What it also omits from the book is the fight between the ape-men and the leopard which follows the blood-spoor from one of their kills into the cave. It's a pivotal moment in the book because it depicts the end of their complete vulnerability to the few creatures that can still prey on them.
Kubrick really did "change the form" with this film... there hasn't been anything like it (arguably) since... just to put in perspective... this 2 and half hour film showed the dawn of man... technology evolution relationships.... space travel... a mission to jupiter and beyond... the Marvel comic universe and its countless movies told no such story and i still no idea what its about... just hours of garbage and filler
Pelicula maravillosa e increible !!!!!!! Lo mas grande que se ha hecho en cine !!!!!!!!!! Millones de años de evolucion en dos horas y media !!!!!!!! Obra de arte absoluta !!!!!!!!!!
Fun fact for you. That very scene you're talking about where the little girls are trashing up the baby dolls is actually based off the intro to 2001: A Space Odyssey where the ape trashes up the skeletal remains of a carcass with a thigh bone, as the video shows.
The monkey sat on a pile of stones And he stared at the broken bone in his hand And the strains of a Viennese quartet Rang out across the land The monkey looked up at the stars And he thought to himself Memory is a stranger History is for fools And he cleaned his hands In a pool of holy writing Turned his back on the garden And set out for the nearest town. ~ Roger Waters
The monolith taught them how to hunt but also taught them how to kill. It was a mistake so they planted monoliths on the moon to detect human development. They didn’t want that mistake to escape our solar system.
From what I understand, this scenario is extremely similar to how human beings were given a 'leg up' in their evolutionary progress. From being told about this, I figured that Kubrick was a member of a secret society. Another film that portrays activities within this society is Eyes Wide Shut. Two films (that I know of), what are the odds?
First time I ever saw this movie was also the first time I ever tried acid. It was almost too much to handle the videophone sequence tripped me out so hard because of the odd time delay, I was on another planet.
The birth of primitive mans intelligence...Thinking makes its appearance here in this great scene. From primate to space in a blink of an eye...Awesome!
Man alone, born of stone, Will stamp the dust of time His hands strike the flame of his soul; Ties a rope to a tree and hangs the Universe Until the winds of laughter blows cold.
