Connon 2
Film Synopsis
The film that I have chosen to view and explore for my final project is 2001: A Space Odyssey
by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark and was released in 1968. The screenplay was inspired by the short story The Sentinel of Eternity
by Arthur C. Clark published in 1951. The film follows the evolution of man, a monolith, Artificial Intelligence (AI), astronauts and space aliens. The story is a science fiction-fantasy story that is told linearly and starts chronologically at the “dawn of time” and moves forward from there. Once we reach present day, the film concentrates on the astronauts, the AI and their trip to Jupiter to try and figure out the puzzle of a
new monolith. The main part of the story follows Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea), Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), HAL9000 (the AI) and crew to Jupiter to investigate a monolith and the
struggles that happen along the way. Question: Proposal
How does the film 2001: A Space Odyssey explore what it means to be part of something bigger? I would like to concentrate on how it explores what it means: “Are we really alone in the
universe?” Was Stanley Kubrick influenced by earlier types of film from the 1920s and 1930s like Charlie Chaplin and Fritz Lang? Did his art imitate life by showing the way the human race was moving faster to the stars and how accurately did it depict the “space race” and the political climate of the 1960s?
