2001: A Space Odyssey is one seriously confusing film. It is undeniably “good” by technical definitions of film making; however, I have heard from many individuals something along the lines of, “I saw it once in high school, but I don’t remember what it was about other that it was really long.” It is a relatively long film, but 140 minutes is by no means the longest movie ever made. In fact, I believe both of the Transformers films to be this length, if not longer.

I believe the perceived length of this movie to be directly associated with one of its deeper and more confusing themes, the meaning and construction of time. As the film transcends through time, mocking all the technological advances of mankind, and pairing them to this indefinable big black monolith object that is the end all be all of everything, it uses many different techniques to remove the viewer from their place in time. One of these techniques is a very limited sound track. The first portion of the film, entitled “Dawn of Man,” is comprised wholly of grunting and banging cave-monkey sounds eventually paired with the eerie supernatural sounds of the monolith. Here is a good example of the first 30 minutes of the film.

As we see mankind progress out of the primordial caveman stage, and accept the roles of technology in his life, the film accompanies the onscreen action with a Johann Strauss composition. As the song plays, space stations take a kind of acrobatic role as they twirl and tumble around in outer space. What must have surely been a technological feat at the time in terms of special effects, is paired with a traditional low tech song to create one of the films many points of time transcendence.

Following this sequence comes the beginning of Dave and Hal’s relationship which once again rids itself of music. Where there were grunts and banging sounds before, there are now indefinable spaceman sounds (purging air, radio signals) and the voices of the main characters.

One can either choose to think deeply about the onscreen action, or merely accept it as a visual masterpiece to be enjoyed by the senses. I decided to appeal to the latter of these two approaches with my mashup video. Phish covers, or rather interprets, Also Sprach Zarathustra in a very non-classical manner, and turns it into a funk song for the ages. Funk music, along with disco, is typically associated with mindless dancing and a kind of “let the good times roll” attitude. The music is intended to fill those empty gaps in your head and your body can act upon the rest. There is, however, the recurring piece of composed music that repeats itself as the song progresses. I decided it would be best to place the major plot points around these sequences in the music. The in between parts I used more to practice with my editing techniques and create imagery that may raise questions in to the viewers instead of merely answering the obvious (if the obvious actually exists).

Honestly, there is not much obvious to answer here, and my main hope of the video is for experienced viewers of the film to hopefully take something new away from it.