2001: A Space Odyssey

The premise of the film is this: Nearly four million years ago at the Dawn of Man, a mysterious black monolith appears, prompting our distant ape ancestors to learn how to use the first tools to kill for food and defend themselves. In a shot that is known to be the longest flash-forward in the history of the cinema, an ape tosses a bone into the sky, then in a flash, changes to the Orion III Spaceplane on its way to Space Station 5. Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester), the Chairman of the National Council for Astronautics, takes a routine trip to the Moon. It is revealed to us that a four million-year-old monolith, named Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-One (TMA-1), has been discovered buried 40’ feet deep in the lunar crater Tycho. Obviously, it had been buried there intentionally. When exposed to the light of the sun, after millions of years in utter darkness, the monolith sends out a powerful electronic signal. Later we find out that the signal was directed towards Jupiter. Eighteen months later, we are aboard the first manned space mission to Jupiter. The U.S.S Discovery’s human astronauts, Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), are forced to consider disconnecting the super-intelligent, and English speaking, HAL 9000 computer (Douglas Rain) that runs their ship when it makes an error. Fathoming their intentions, HAL succeeds in killing everyone but Dave, who disconnects it and finds out about the previously secret discovery of the lunar monolith. Arriving at Jupiter, Dave discovers another black monolith orbiting the gas giant, and after flying into it, he is taken through a wormhole in space, eventually landing in a room that could literally be any hotel room on Earth. There he ages rapidly before encountering the final monolith, which turns him into a newborn Star Child and returns him to gaze upon the planet Earth from its orbit.

The story seems pretty straightforward doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. Because what Stanley Kubrick made, which could have been a simple science fiction tale, turns out to be a philosophical look at humanity, and what its potential role is in the cosmos. Not only that, he also takes a look at what our technology could eventually become. At the end of our evolutionary peak, we may create technology that actually surpasses us in its perfection, and then becomes the new masters of our galaxy. These points are only a small part of a larger mosaic of ideas and ideologies that make up the film. Clarke wrote a masterful science fiction story, that is beyond question, but it was Kubrick that made the film so much deeper and insightful. Take, for example, the scene when Dave is in the room near the end; he knocks the wine glass of the table shattering it, yet the wine remains. This is a symbolism of what the next phase of our evolutionary chain may lead to. The body is gone, yet the ‘spirit’ remains. It shows us that the next step would be to alleviate our need for flesh and to become sentient matter. Another part is during Dr. Floyd’s trip to Clavius. Onboard the shuttle, everybody is relearning things like walking, eating, even how to void themselves. We are only babes when it comes to this point in our lives, everything that we have accomplished to become masters of our planet is moot once we leave it and put ourselves within reaching distance of the heavens. I could go on like this all day, because the movie is literally stuffed with this type of imagery. Kubrick was never a man that put things in his films just for filler. Everything had meaning, and he enjoyed it when people had to come to their own understandings and conclusions. That’s why he made films; to make the audience think.