Use of Sound

I’ve always thought of a movie soundtrack containing sound that is usually diagetic in nature. I never really thought of a lack of sound acting in the same way, but in 2001: A Space Odyssey the lack of sound acts in exactly that way. There is no sound in space and so for most of the very long film there is no sound and so everything being correct this should complete the audio/visual contract. I’m not entirely sure it does. I find it disturbing to hear nothing but absolute silence.

Quite often I tell my family member’s that one of the reasons I love deer hunting so much is the hours of silence and tranquility that allow me to relax and think. But even in a dark tree stand at 5am there is always some sort of subtle noise present. So I guess that’s just one of the things about Stanley Kubrick’s sound design that bothers me, granted, I think that that unsettled felling is probably what he was going for, but it seemed a little out of place especially in scenes where the astronauts were all relaxing on the ship. At the very least I expected to hear more sounds that were related to the operation of the ship, but aside from the hibernation monitor beeping, be got nothing. It seemed to me like a very unique use of sound, but not nearly unique enough for me to torture myself with watching 3 hours of silent film, sorry, my attention span is much to short.