2001: A Space Odyssey

→ in
Tools    





filmfreak's Avatar
Registered User
Thanks to a film festival running at my local theatre I saw this last night. I think it was the first time i'd actually sat through the whole thing. My problem is this:

Exactly what is it about?

Or more specifically the last twenty minutes.

Im assuming its all to do with the evolution of man, or something like that. I get the significance of the Black Monilith giving the chimps/early man the thought of using weapons (A really significant moment in human history) and uncovering the one on the moon activated the message relay to Jupiter.

I am assuming that whoever put the Monoliths there are testing mankind to see how far we have come, and that this was the point of the Jupiter mission. Did we pass the test?

I may be barking up the wrong tree completely. Can anyone shed any light on this, has anyone got a definitive explanation, or do you have your own theories?

Saying that I did quite enjoy it, I just left slightly confused.

-----------------------------

Sorry about posting this in the wrong section TWT, I thought I was in this category when i was posting it.
__________________
Lex Luthor: "I'd question your integrity, but you're a journalist."



Guy
Registered User
Originally posted by filmfreak
Thanks to a film festival running at my local theatre I saw this last night. I think it was the first time i'd actually sat through the whole thing. My problem is this:

Exactly what is it about?

Or more specifically the last twenty minutes.

Im assuming its all to do with the evolution of man, or something like that. I get the significance of the Black Monilith giving the chimps/early man the thought of using weapons (A really significant moment in human history) and uncovering the one on the moon activated the message relay to Jupiter.

I am assuming that whoever put the Monoliths there are testing mankind to see how far we have come, and that this was the point of the Jupiter mission. Did we pass the test?

I may be barking up the wrong tree completely. Can anyone shed any light on this, has anyone got a definitive explanation, or do you have your own theories?

Saying that I did quite enjoy it, I just left slightly confused.

-----------------------------

Sorry about posting this in the wrong section TWT, I thought I was in this category when i was posting it.
I dont think there is a definitive explanation, everyone's theories have merit!

I agree with some of your comments, specifically the Black Monoliths. The monoliths sounded just like screaming souls, which I think means they are a 'higher race' (god, or aliens, or anything). In the film, the humans passed the test. Dave overcame HAL. Man defeated the machine. This was probably another test, could the human race come to Jupiter on the reliance of a machine? It turned out that they could, but not without problems (HAL malfunctioning). So, at the end I think David dies and comes back to life as the baby in the egg, which is probably the next step in evolution.



filmfreak's Avatar
Registered User
Cheers Guy.

I think it just about makes some sort of sense now. But surely someone must have asked Kubrick for his interpretation. He probably didnt answer them though!

Maybe I should read the book.



I'm not old, you're just 12.
I honestly can't say I liked 2001, and I'm sure I will get my movie geek card revoked for this. It just didn't make any sense at the end. It made my head hurt a whole lot trying to figure it out. The whole last half makes me feel like Tardy Turtle...
__________________
"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/



I heard that 2010 explains some of the stuff near the end of 2001. I've only watched 2001 though, and I liked it despite it being completely confusing; it's very profound.



Lets put a smile on that block
Watched this the other night on television and i must say i went on a journey of emotions...mostly involving confusion, fear...creepyness, maybe a little hunger...made me want a monkey.... and then made me more confused than ever. This thread is over a year old and poor old film freak still hasn't had enough explanations and i demand some now! So if you please.....What do you guys think about this?

What were the monoliths? Were they put on our planet by robots? Aliens? I kind of had the idea that they were there to control us or at least inspire evolution or emotion in us? Hal controlled everything, but was eventually defeated by us, was the feotus at the end meant to represent the birth of a new age now that the robots no longer have our control? AM i asking too many questions and going way off track? Help!
__________________
Pumpkins scream in the DEAD of night!



Do you know my poetry?
When I first saw this movie, I was just amazed and kept thinking to myself, "How could this movie be made in 1968?". This is, and probably will always be my favorite movie of all time. I would also like all those questions Blib posted answered, but I don't think anybody really truly understood everything in the movie. Arthur C. Clarke once said: "If you understood 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."



"The experience of the thing is what's important, not the ability to verbalize it." - Stanley Kubrick.

That being said, it's been a while since I've read the book.



Feed me breadcrumbs
my two bits

The baby bit was us joining the family of "intelligence" that was inherent in the constuction of the monoliths. As we have demonstrated enough intel to become a junior member (with no speaking rights) with no actual voice or position on anything, just a friendly hello. Read 2010, it all becomes clearer with Jupiter becoming a star and HAL still not cutting the mustard (HAL was not evolved and therefore could not pass the test that the journey to Jupiter signified. A right of passage).

Thats it.
__________________
Quack, quack?



What exactly did you dislikers not understand about the last twenty minutes? I'm not saying that it has a defined meaning, but it seems pretty easy to interpret, at least to me. 2001 is, without a doubt, my favorite movie of all time. You could spend pages interpreting all it meant, but that's not the point of the movie. It's interpreting the messages that you yourself percieve are being sent, as are all of Kubrick's films. Kubrick's films, while seeming to most cold and distant on the outside, are usually the most personal, as it allows you so much of your own interpretation without force-feeding ideas down your throat.
__________________
You're not hopeless...



I don't think anybody claimed that they disliked the movie. They just said that they didn't understand it. So, Henry, since you understood it so completely why don't you tell us all what it meant.



Originally Posted by whoopdido
I don't think anybody claimed that they disliked the movie. They just said that they didn't understand it. So, Henry, since you understood it so completely why don't you tell us all what it meant.
Well, you neither read my post nor the thread. Monkeypunch did say he didn't like it.

And I never claimed to know the exact definition of every message, read my post. I said the point of the movie was creating your own messages from the rather ambiguous clues Kubrick left. Comprehension is your friend.



Hmm...Henry, you're original post did seem a little condescending.

I'm not saying that it has a defined meaning, but it seems pretty easy to interpret, at least to me.
I believe you meant the final twenty minute "rebirth" scene, didn't you? Why don't you give your personal interpretation of it for whoopdido.
__________________
"Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."



there's a frog in my snake oil
I think the other posts have covered in as much as it's possible - well, having read the Clark and Kubrick quotes, i'm kind of happy with mine, and others explanations.

Blib: I think the megaliths are just supposed to be objects left by some sort of advanced extraterrestrial race (and probably not robots, unless they're robots capable of evolution, as Creed said). The one on the earth seemed to stimulate evolution in the creatures that came in contact with it. The buried one on the moon required our finding it, and was a different type of call to evolution, but the theme is consitant.

I hadn't thought of the journey to this next stage of evolution as a rite of passage, but i reckon that's spot on. The problems they encounter along the way are still in the realm of questioning familiar stuff i.e. the role of technology and human-nature in our social evolution. But beyond that i don't think either Clark or Kubrick want to tell us what the next direction human/social evolution might take, or what an advanced extraterrestrial race might be like (other than suggesting they'd have the sensitivity to contact us in this way - ensuring we were ready to meet them/able to learn from them etc). They sort of mess with our preconceptions on that level: unexplained forms visually, and then the messing with time (which i'm happy to believe isn't the simple straight-forward thing we perceive it to be anyway - and it's interesting to note that our cognitive ability to think about the future and mull on the past is what some neurologists/psychologists etc think seperates us most distinctly from animals.)

I've never known quite what to make of the baby thing - other than perhaps the idea of re-birth being used to suggest continual growth (altho i've always been glad it turned up, coz otherwise it'd look like the aliens just rapidly aged our heroic traveller in some form of accident or prank ). But I think Creed's analogy works really well - the idea of us as a fledgling partner, with no speaking rights, being born into a new epoch in our existence - one that embraces an even wider territory in which to live and learn.

I guess the whole point is - it's anyone's guess. Unless you're a super-evolved alien (in which case it's polite to let people know first. Send a megalith instead of a postcard. That sort of thing ).
__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here



All good people are asleep and dreaming.
Originally Posted by cosmonaut
"The experience of the thing is what's important, not the ability to verbalize it." - Stanley Kubrick.
End of story.



Originally Posted by LordSlaytan
Hmm...Henry, you're original post did seem a little condescending.
Yes. So are a lot of my posts. I enjoy beeing a jackass. Everyone needs someone to dislike, and I fill the void pretty well when Django just gets boring.


Originally Posted by LordSlaytan
I believe you meant the final twenty minute "rebirth" scene, didn't you? Why don't you give your personal interpretation of it for whoopdido.
Personal interpretation? You're getting a little personal there. *Laughs*

*realizes it isn't funny*

Okay, so yeah. We're zooming through space and finally Dave stops and finds himself in a white room. He sees himself living his life all over again, and eventually comes to his death bed. He reaches for the monolith, and then is reborn as the Star Child, or the next step in human evolution. To understand what happened is not what is necesary, the themes underlying the movie are necesary. And I don't believe anyone is ever truly right about what exactly the movie is about, for many reasons. Maybe I misinterpreted their words, but it seemed to me that they were not understanding what happened, or why it happened. And, in my opinion, that is easy to figure out and also not that important considering what movie we are talking about here.



Originally Posted by Henry The Kid
Everyone needs someone to dislike...
I hate to break this to you...but I like you. Sorry.



Originally Posted by LordSlaytan
I hate to break this to you...but I like you. Sorry.
Bu-but...

*Runs off crying*



there's a frog in my snake oil
Here's an excerpt from a letter written to Clarke

Originally Posted by Mr Sam Laks of Alhambra, California
"What is the meaning behind the epidemic? Does the pink furniture reveal anything about the 3rd monolith and it's emitting a pink colour when it first approaches the ship? Does this have anything to do with a shy expression? Does the alcohol offered by the Russians have anything to do with French kissing and saliva?"