What question did this study set out to answer?

The aim is to explore how Kubrick’s 2001 challenges conventional narrative principles through montage.

May 26, 2026CINEJ Cinema Journal0 citationsOpen Access

Jump Cut: Montage as Metaphysics in Kubrick’s 2001

Key Points

The aim is to explore how Kubrick’s 2001 challenges conventional narrative principles through montage.
Analyzed Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in the context of Eisenstein’s montage theory.
Examined narrative structures used in literature and film, particularly the Homeric model.
Interpreted film sequences to illustrate themes of rupture and discontinuity.
Kubrick’s 2001 employs montage to reject traditional narrative continuity.
The film serves as a manifesto for metaphysics through its use of discontinuity.
Eisenstein’s theoretical framework effectively illuminates new interpretations of the film.

Abstract

Our first impulse is to view Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as an odyssey in the Homeric manner. Odyssey here refers to a persistent narrative mode that continues to dominate our reception of literature and film, one that privileges continuity and coherence as formal, diegetic principles. But when viewed through the lens of Eisenstein’s theory of montage, 2001, it becomes clear, is expressly designed to challenge those principles. Rather than championing development, evolution, progress or return (all variations on the Odyssean trope), Kubrick’s film, I argue, is a manifesto for rupture and discontinuity, for metaphysics as montage.

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