To celebrate 50 years of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, we take a look at two forgotten films by Pavel Klushantsev. These films show a clear influence on the visuals and special effects which made  2001: A Space Odyssey  the groundbreaking work we know which so brilliantly stands the test of time. 

Act 1: Dawn of Man/The Space Race

Scene 1: Monolith Arrives/Sputnik 

The predominant vision of Outer Space today is of a place that is tangible and real and therefore explorable. That’s something which only became possible in the past 60 years. Because of that tangible reality, in Outer Space physics and engineering reign supreme and drama results from the scientific fact that in space no one can hear you scream. 

In the early days of cinema, Outer Space was much more expressionistic than it is today. 

This tangibility is a side effect of the Space Race and is marked by the shift from looking up to looking forward. It is that change from uncertainty to possibility that led to a scientific and aesthetic realism about Outer Space. 

That gesture illustrates inspiration, a moment when something abstract becomes possible. It’s a gesture which is extended to watching screens where realistic images of Outer Space, actual and imaginary, are a source of inspiration. Screens are monoliths. 

Scene 2: Space Ballet/Visual Comparison 

Take 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1968, some 50 years ago. It is one of the most influential movies ever made. Every sci-fi film since owes something to this vision. One of realism and based around a mastery of special effects which still produce wonder today. 

2001 is groundbreaking, but it is not entirely original. Years earlier, and made in the Soviet Union, there are these scenes from The Road to the Stars made in 1957, and The Moon made in 1965. Both were directed by Pavel Klushantsev and they bear a striking resemblance to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick and Klushantsev’s films are the spark and the first steps of 60 years of realistic sci-fi which echoes into contemporary films like Interstellar (2014) or Arrival (2016). 

Act 2: Mission to Jupiter 18 Months Later/Soviet Cinema

Scene 1: Birthday & EVA/Soviet and American Realisms 

There’s a historical irony here, that 2001 is lauded for its vision when in fact it’s not original itself. And there’s the additional irony that 2001 is a meditation on the process of seeing something alien, like The Road to the Stars, and being inspired, a fact which goes largely unacknowledged. 

Many cases of the iconic framing in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) can be seen prefigured in a handful of Soviet realist documentaries. 

Klushantsev advanced a Soviet style realism which extended to a transcendent place among the stars. His films show a vision where the Soviet revolution continues into space and captures audiences with a creatively driven community beyond Russia. Klushantsev’s films explain how an ideal communism, unfettered by gravity, could come to be. 

The Road to the Stars paints the future as something aspirational. In commemorating leaving the Earth, Klushantsev created stories which are propagandistic and subversive. The scenes in Klushantsev’s films are understated and engrossing. These images prompted a revolution in film. The revolution of envisioning Outer Space ends somewhere between the visions of Klushantsev and Kubrick. 

Scene 2: Intermission, Daisy/No Substantive Updates & Ownership 

There hasn’t been a substantive update to the depiction of Outer Space since 2001. Frankly, Kubrick couldn’t escape—couldn’t revolutionize—the cinematic form as much as he could own it. 

“The winner is Stanley Kubrick, for 2001.”

Burt Lancaster at the 1968 Academy Awards

In owning it, and in possessing so much of the visuals in 2001 completely, as iconic moments on screen, Kubrick is involved in advancing a vision of outer space that is groundbreaking, but in many ways isn’t contrary to reality. This is part of what keeps 2001 forever young. 

“…and in the whole history of movies, there’s been nothing like that vision ever.”

Steven Spielberg at the 1999 Academy Awards

Act 3: Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite/Visions 

Scene 1: Stargate/Framing the Question 

Kubrick’s dare to is actually to move beyond the realism he so thoroughly indulges in 2001. In terms of filmmaking, Klushantsev’s films are the bone and Kubrick’s films are the spaceship—the same, different only in sophistication. 

Even some less obvious influence from The Moon (1965) can be seen in the sets and presence of screens everywhere in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). 

There are tough concepts to grapple with here. But inspiration is really what 2001 is all about. More specifically, 2001 is about arriving at creative breakthroughs through abstraction from an experience on a screen. 

Scene 2: Star Child/What 2001 Is Really About 

2001, much like The Road to the Stars and The Moon before it, is filled with screens, people looking at screens, people looking at things that look like screens and so on. It takes this into a sort of cascade of screens within screens, presumably with more screens within those screens. 

There are so many nods to the look of television sets in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) that it can be hard to count. 

It sort of mirrors this cosmic alignment of the planets and the monolith. There’s the disk of the Earth, the disks of the Sun and Moon, eventually going up to a point that is Jupiter. But that further aligns with the crest of the Australopithecus’s head implied in front of the monolith and extensively with the audiences’ heads in front of a screen which is like a monolith. 

This is a process—experiencing and abstracting—which Kubrick sort of takes as generative of all of reality. What more could there be than our extendable experience of what there is? 2001 is perhaps the most profound metaphysical argument committed to film as it approaches ontological questions from an epistemic perspective. 

In that way, 2001 is ostensibly a film about everything. 

Author: Peter Hogenson has been writing about film for ten years, most recently as a student at the University of Minnesota and as the Chief Blog Editor at Facets. 

Author:  Paul Gonter is the Marketing Director at Facets. He has written for DINCA.org, runs the media project luffa, and is an Associate Board member at Full Spectrum Features.