Breaking Down 2001: A Space Odyssey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukeHdiszZmE 

The scene I will be dissecting takes place towards the end of my all time favorite film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dave, an astronaut has just survived repeated attempts against his life by HAL 9000, the operating system that runs the entire ship Dave resides on, and now he is heading to the Logic Memory Center to turn off HAL and essentially kill him.

We open on a Medium shot over Dave’s shoulder, which according to Monday’s lecture is meant to be the information shot. We don’t see Dave’s face, but his quick pace through the ship’s rooms shows that this is a man with a mission, an objective, and even as HAL is asking him to stop what he is doing, Dave continues unaffected. We even cut to another Medium shot, this time from a low angle, cementing Dave’s power in this scene. He is a harbinger of death, and cannot be stopped.

Now this is admittedly a rougher scene to dissect through the basics of shot composition, as it is mainly shot in wide shots at low angles such as the one shown here:

Used through out this scene, these compositions not only strengthen Dave’s image of power, but also how alone he is. HAL has managed to kill everyone else that has resided on the ship, so that even when Dave succeeds, he is still on his own in space, the ultimate place of solitude.

Then Kubrick eventually cuts to a straight on Close Up of HAL. In a shot designed to show detail in terms of feelings and emotions, all we see is HAL’s red eye fill the entire frame, creating a meta sense of irony as his entire death brings to question whether he is capable of humanity. HAL is always in control, but now he is helpless as to his impending termination.

Once Dave is finally in the hub of HAL’s brain, Kubrick shots him from numerous angles; high, low, and straight on, framing him at times to be a miniature in the frame and at others to fill it. This creates not only disorientation in terms of gravity, due to Dave’s weightlessness in space, but also in terms of his power in the scene. We as an audience lose our grasp of who’s in control, in the right, and displaying humanity, and it captures the brilliance of Kubrick’s work.