Original subtitles

Testing. 1, 2, 3.

Testing. 1, 2, 3.

Interview with Stanley Kubrick

on the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

August 20th, 1968.

London, Great Britain.

Mr Kubrick, we'd like to thank you again for this interview.

We know you're a busy man.

The pleasure is mine.

OK.

- Should we begin? - Yes.

Great.

Much of the controversy surrounding 2001

deals with the meaning of the metaphysical symbols

that abound in the film.

What is the metaphysical message of 2001 ?

It's not a message that I ever intend to convey in words.

I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience

that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness,

just as music does.

OK, without laying out a philosophical road map for the viewer,

can you tell us your own interpretation of the meaning of the film?

No, for the reasons I've already given.

How much would we appreciate La Gioconda today

if Leonardo had written at the bottom of his canvas:

"This lady is smiling slightly because she has rotted teeth"

or "because she's hiding a secret from her lover"?

It would shut off the viewer's appreciation

and shackle him to a reality other than his own.

I don't want that to happen to 2001 .

Apparently, some prominent critics

felt that 2001 should be among those films

still exempted from the category of art.

All of them castigated it as

dull,

pretentious

and overlong.

How do you account for their hostility?

Fortunately,

film critics rarely have any effect on the general public.

The film is well on its way to becoming

the greatest moneymaker in MGM's history.

Perhaps, there is a certain element of the lumpen literati

that is so dogmatically atheist

and materialist

and Earth-bound

that it finds the grandeur of space an anathema.

There are approximately 100 billion stars

in our galaxy alone.

And there are approximately 100 billion galaxies

in just the visible universe.

It's reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact,

countless billions of such planets

where biological life has arisen.

So it seems likely that there are billions of planets in the universe

not only where intelligent life is on a lower scale than man,

but other billions where it is approximately equal,

and others still

where it is hundreds of thousands of years

in advance of us.

When you think of the giant technological strides

that man has made in a few millennia,

less than a microsecond in the cosmology of the universe,

can you imagine the evolutionary development

that much older life forms have taken?

Their potentialities would be limitless

and their intelligence ungraspable by humans.

Even assuming the cosmic evolutionary path you suggest,

what has this to do with the nature of God?

These beings would be gods

to the billions of less advanced races in the universe,

just as man would appear a god to an ant

that somehow comprehended man's existence.

What do you believe would be the effect on humanity

if the Earth were contacted by a race of such ungodlike

but technologically superior beings?

There's a considerable difference of opinion

on this subject among scientists and philosophers.

Some contend

that encountering a highly advanced civilization

would produce a traumatic cultural shock effect on man.

by divesting him of his smug ethnocentrism

and shattering the delusion

that he is the center of the universe.

My impression is

that the attention span of most people is quite brief.

After a week or two of great excitement

and over-saturation in the newspapers and on television,

the public's interest would drop off

and the United Nations,

or whatever world body we had then,

would settle down to discussions with the aliens.

You're assuming that extraterrestrials would be benevolent.

Why?

Why should a vastly superior race

bother to harm or destroy us?

If an intelligent ant

suddenly traced a message in the sand at my feet reading:

"I am sentient; let's talk things over,"

I doubt very much that I would rush to grind him under my heel.

As you've probably deduced,

I'm really fascinated by UFOs

and I only regret that this field of investigation

has been pre-empted by a crackpot fringe

that claims to have soared to Mars on flying saucers.

That kind of approach makes it very easy

to dismiss the whole phenomenon,

which we do at our risk.

Following this theme,

what do you think we'll find on the moon?

I think that in the movie, I answer your question.

If alien races

have ever visited earth in the remote past

and left artifacts

for man to discover in the future,

they probably chose the arid, airless lunar vacuum,

where no deterioration would take place

and an object could exist for millennia.

Perhaps a message of greeting, a cache of knowledge

or simply a cosmic burglar alarm

signaling that another race had mastered space flight.

At a time when astronauts are preparing to set foot on the moon,

I think it's necessary to open up our earth-bound minds

to such speculation.

No one knows what's waiting for us in the universe.

We have ignition sequence start.

Two, one, zero.

It's one small step for man...

OK, Houston, we have a problem.

Auto sequence initiated.

Roger.

There is orange soil.

Five metres distance.

ACS is close to vertical.

Free for touchdown.

Free for touchdown.

Less than a minute away from the acquisition

of Challenger through Hawaii.

Challenger is going throttle up.

Looking ahead to the year of your film,

2001.

What major social and scientific changes do you foresee?

Perhaps the greatest breakthrough we may have by 2001

is the possibility that man may be able to eliminate old age.

Over the eons,

man's powerlessness to prevent death

has led him to force it from the forefront of his mind

for his own psychological health,

and to accept it unquestionably

as the unavoidable termination.

But with the advance of science,

this is no longer necessary or desirable.

Death is no more natural or inevitable than smallpox or diphtheria.

Death is a disease

and as susceptible to cure as any other disease.

What impact do you think such dramatic scientific breakthroughs

will have on the lifestyle of society at the turn of the century?

That's almost impossible to say.

Who would have predicted in 1900 what life in 1968 would be like?

Politics and world affairs change so quickly

that it's difficult to predict the future of social institutions

for even 10 years with a modicum of accuracy.

Technology is, in many ways,

more predictable than human behavior.

Here is a diagram.

There's little doubt that the whole concept of leisure

will be improved.

I'm sure we'll have sophisticated 3D holographic television and films.

All their future productions will be made in 3D film.

And it's possible that completely new forms of entertainment

and education will be devised.

You might have a machine that taps the brain

and ushers you into a vivid dream experience.

On the other hand,

there are some risks in this kind of thing.

If pleasure that intense were readily available to all of us,

we might well become a race of sensually stultified zombies

plugged into pleasure stimulators

while machines do our work

and our bodies and minds atrophy.

Have you ever used LSD or other so-called

consciousness-expanding drugs?

No.

I believe that drugs are basically

of more use to the audience than to the artist.

I think that the illusion of oneness with the universe,

and absorption with the significance of every object in your environment,

and the pervasive aura of peace and contentment

is not the ideal state for an artist.

Actually, up to now,

perception on the deepest level has really,

from an evolutionary point of view,

been detrimental to survival.

If primitive man had been content

to sit on a ledge by his cave

absorbed in a beautiful sunset

or a complex cloud configuration,

he might never have exterminated his rival species,

but neither would he have achieved mastery of the planet.

Now, however,

man is faced with the unprecedented situation

of potentially unlimited material

and technological resources at his disposal

and a tremendous amount of leisure time.

At last, he has the opportunity to look both within and beyond himself

with a new perspective without endangering or impeding

the progress of the species.

Some critics have detected not only a deep pessimism,

but also a kind of misanthropy in much of your work.

Is there any truth to that?

Good God, no.

You don't stop being concerned with man because you recognize

his essential absurdities and frailties and pretensions.

In the deepest sense,

I believe in man's potential and his capacity for progress.

Are you worried that such progress brings risks?

Like a possible nuclear war?

One short circuit in a computer.

What's the problem?

One lunatic in a command structure.

I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

And we could negate the heritage of the billions

who have died since the dawn of man

and abort the promise of the billions yet unborn.

This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.

good bye.

However,

the destruction of this planet would have no significance

on a cosmic scale.

To an observer in the Andromeda nebulae,

the sign of our extinction would be no more than a match

flaring for a second in the heavens.

And if that match does blaze in the darkness,

there will be none to mourn a race that used a power

that could have lit a beacon in the stars

to light its funeral pyre.

The choice

is ours.

Whether we like to admit it or not,

in each man's chest a tiny ferret of fear

at this ultimate knowledge gnaws away at his ego

and his sense of purpose.

We're fortunate, in a way, that our body,

and the fulfilment of its needs and functions,

plays such an imperative role in our lives.

This physical shell creates a buffer between us

and the mind-paralyzing realization

that only a few years of existence

separate birth from death.

If man really sat back and thought about his impending termination,

and his terrifying insignificance

and aloneness in the cosmos,

he would surely go mad,

or succumb to a numbing sense of futility.

Why, he might ask himself,

should he bother to write a great symphony,

or strive to make a living, or even to love another,

when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote

whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space?

Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities

to view their lives in this perspective,

who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend

and that amidst a countless myriad of stars

their existence goes unknown and unchronicled,

can fall prey all too easily

to the ultimate anomie.

If life is so purposeless,

do you feel that it's worth living?

Yes.

For those of us who manage somehow to cope with our mortality.

The very meaninglessness of life

forces man to create his own meaning.

Children, of course, begin life

with an untarnished sense of wonder,

a capacity to experience total joy

at something as simple

as the greenness of a leaf.

But as they grow older,

the awareness of death and decay

begins to impinge on their consciousness

and subtly erode their joie de vivre,

their idealism

and their assumption of immortality.

As a child matures,

he sees death and pain everywhere about him,

and begins to lose faith in faith and in the ultimate goodness of man.

But,

if he's reasonably strong and lucky

he can emerge from this twilight of the soul

into a rebirth of life's élan.

Both because of and in spite of his awareness

of the meaninglessness of life,

he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation.

He may not recapture

the same pure sense of wonder he was born with,

but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining.

The most terrifying fact about the universe

is not that it is hostile,

but that it is indifferent.

But if we can come to terms with this indifference

and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death,

our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfilment.

However vast the darkness,

we must supply our own light.

Subtitles: Bbo Subtitulado