tone (the classic characterization of thesmooth talking villain). In 2001, space is accurately depictedas a truly silent vacuum, but technological Man fills this worldwith the sound of circulating air systems, hummingcomputers and hissing doors. This sonic menace was latertaken to extreme by Ridley Scott in Alien which sharescommon elements with 2001, not least of which is one of theclassical pieces which Kubrick uses (when the Jupiter missionis first underway). 2001 begins with a desert plain, and the sound of windbroken only by the sound of ape men digging in the dirt for amorsel of vegetation. When a leopard snarls and attacks oneof the apemen it rocks the soundtrack. The film ends with Dave Bowman, breathing then steppinginto a fabricated room while the background noise windsdown to ever lower notes, which has the effect of slowingthe pace. We then see Bowman as an older man eating at atable (eating is a common theme in the film) and the soundof his cutlery clashing against the plate. Both of theseframing scenes are made suspenseful not just by their slowpacing, and their unfamiliar placement, but the eerie,subdued and anxious sound. The atmosphere in the room inwhich Bowman is eating is tense - the sound is only broken bythe smash of the glass on the tiled floor. The soundpunctuates the atmosphere and shakes the viewer. Another famous scene that illustrates this contrast is thesequence in which Bowman is rescuing his murderedshipmate, Frank Poole. The silence of space, through whichPoole spins to his doom, is absolute. Where earlier the spacewalks were accompanied by the methodical breathing ofthe astronaut inside his helmet, here there is no sound, onlylifelesness, a pure void only broken by the anomaly of abright orange spacesuit tumbling away through space.Inside Bowmans craft, the Shipboard radar tracker beepsloudly, building in intensity. The juxtaposition of the silence ofa dying man floating alone in space, with...
