2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey is an incredibly unique movie that does not bend to Hollywood's traditional use of music and excludes many common nonmusical elements that we have seen thus far. In 1968, Kubrick had a fair amount of special effects abilities, which he employed frequently--such as the rotating rooms, the floating pen, and the psychodelic graphic sequence used as David flies toward Jupiter. Also, there is no romantic female role, little dialogue, and little guidance as to how we should interpret the plot. As far as music is concerned, Kubrick uses existing music, and little music at all, so I will refer to him as the musical authority for 2001: A Space Odyssey as there is no traditional composer.

Kubrick takes a minimalist approach to 2001, employing only 5 songs. To begin the film he uses a mezzoforte "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," a classical orchestra piece with noticeable but not overbearing brass that build a couple of times and then slow but light drums to build a sense of wonder as we see visions of the Sun--rising--, Earth, and Moon line up in space. Then there is a noticeable void of music as we see terrestrial sunrises over vast, seemingly desolate plains. Here the noise of the wind in the background contributes to the feeling of desolateness and the utter lack of dialogue. The hooting and hollering of rival simian tribes later accentuates their primitivity without any music necessary or used. The next music is "Lux Aeterna," a rather quiet anti-climactic piece using long vocal notes and what sounds like a theremin also using long notes. This is the piece of music that will become the leitmotif for the mysterious rectangular prism that seems to represent knowledge and perhaps religion. This music stops abruptly as the scene changes and is not replaced by other music. Kubrick frequently drops music at the end of scenes without replacing it. "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" comes back as a primate discovers tools by bashing a skeleton with a femur bone. The other songs used are "Blue Danube Waltz," which accompanies the courting ritual of the space station and Floyd's passenger shuttle, "Requiem," which creates an eerie feeling as Jupiter and its moons come into view, and "Adventure," which might be the theme used when we are introduced to HAL's ship. Technically, HAL also sings a portion of "Daisy," a lubby-dubby song that he can only sing slowly and exhaustedly as David removes successful parts of his artificial neural processor. This represents how innocent technology can be when it is in a simple state; a sharp contrast to calmly, murderously obsessed HAL who kills off members of the crew to ensure the safety of the mission.

This movie has the least dialogue of any movie that I have ever seen, and Kubrick attempts to fill these spaces with appropriate mechanical humming noises, heavy breathing, and the like. These change with the camera location: in the infamous "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." sequence, space is realistically silent, the inside of Dave's pod cabin has some unobtrusive mechanical sound, and the inside of the ship with HAL has a faint mechanical droning noise that accentuates HAL's brevity and refusal to speak in the beginning of their "Open the pod bay doors" exchange because the audience is expecting some sort of dialogue but only gets the humming noise. Almost any other movie would have employed some form of music in at least a few of the tense sequences such as this exchange, HAL's disconnection of the hibernaters from life support, or HAL's eavesdropping. No evil theme is ever associated directly with HAL, implying perhaps that complex technology is sterile, devoid of emotion. All of the previous characters we have seen have been human, and perhaps Kubrick is trying to display the lack of humanity in HAL or even the crewmates by suppressing his musical themes. For instance, David does not cry or become visibly upset when he sees his crewmate floating dead in space, nor when he kills HAL.