2001: A Space Odyssey

A paean of humanism

A film is — or should be — more like music than like fiction.
Stanley Kubrick

This is the film that has showed most compellingly what cinema is, and what it is capable of. Kubrick stripped the medium to its most basic elements and from them assembled this grand and austere poetry, which is a monument to the motion picture, and a philosophical journey into film: to find its beating heart and amplify it tenfold. I cannot call it my favourite movie, nor the most entertaining, but I must call it the best.

In the beginning there was darkness — not the silent, familiar, and expectant darkness of Genesis, but a darkness of sourceless screams, unnerving and confusing. In the beginning, says Kubrick, was the Monolith.

The opening sequence is unconventional, certainly, and perhaps not commercially practical; but it is essential. It instills a cyclopean, almost Lovecraftian, dimension: a visceral terror inspired by enormity of time and space, a fear of the unknown and unknowable, a sense of man confounded and overcome. It is this feeling which unlocks the film.

And then comes “The Dawn of Man”. Apes battle for territory by day and cower in caves at night. Their primitive minds are sparked by the (re)appearance of the Monolith; in a climactic scene, one ape smashes up a pile of bones, a feat which ushers in all of human history. This chapter serves to suggest our crude, competitive, and weak nature, highlighting the wonder of our achievements in space, but also suggesting we are too primitive a species to dabble as we do.

Our simian forefathers dominate competitors using their new technology — and suddenly, we are in space. For a while, we gaze at each image; every frame has an almost religious significance; each scene is a ritual. The spacecraft swell to fill the screen, full of strength and dignity, a metaphor for the film itself. Cuts are clean, fades are subtle, and camera movement is minimal. Kubrick evokes the overwhelming austerity and awe of space by the controlled motion of the film.

The opening sequence was one of many bold choices made; some, however, seem commonplace because Kubrick’s decisions defined the genre. For example, the blending of “The Blue Danube” with whirling spaceships for a whimsical effect; the use of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” to tie together the pre-historical and the post-modern; the weird, electronic sounds accompanying the even weirder montage of colour and light; and every shot used to establish the spaceships. These techniques have become staples of the sci-fi genre only because they were used so affectingly and enduringly in 2001 (that is to say, 1968).

It seems that every sci-fi trope was inaugurated, or at least popularised, in 2001. I mean, it even had AI. David Bowman and Frank Poole are the two heroes chosen to undertake the journey to Jupiter — their ultimate mission, however, is not clear. Almost inevitably (to the modern eye), H.A.L. 9000 turns on them, picking off the astronauts one by one — this is not a malevolent action, however, simply a matter of rescuing the mission from human foibles. David, using the oldest trick in the computer manual, pulls HAL’s plug, and so manages to survive.

But his trials are not over. In his final moments, HAL reveals their true mission: the Monolith, which has been blasting radio signals across the solar system. Upon his arrival at Jupiter, the hapless David is zipped across — time, space, another dimension, we don’t quite know — to a futuristic, but surprisingly mundane, room. This scene has been dubbed “The Stargate Sequence” (alternatively, “the ultimate trip”).

Now, as with all good things, we must come to the end. Specifically: what on earth (in space?) could it mean?

It is a well-established fact that neither Kubrick nor Clarke intended for a single, correct interpretation. Rather, they aimed to affect the viewer, and in so doing, to provoke a multiplicity of perspectives. So, I shall offer mine. When David is transformed into the space-baby/star-child, I think he becomes whatever sent the Monolith — a pure being of energy, some sort of god — in a very literal sense. What this means is that David himself (although I believe David as a personality has ceased to exist) actually creates humanity, sends the Monolith, and guides them forward, so that he may become what he already is. It’s an insular loop which sustains itself, a destiny which must be fulfilled. Why this seeming contradiction is possible is that ‘neo-David’ is beyond space and time, which is suggested in the light-room scenes, where he watches himself age. One might summarise the film as a science-fiction, time-bending creation myth.

(I will add that this is far from the filmmakers favoured interpretation: Kubrick thought David was in a sort of human zoo, where he is being studied, and that it is actually ‘aliens’ which transform David, and catalyse human progress. This, as far as I know, is also the implication in the book of the same title.)

Kubrick asserts that the open-endedness was not intentional, but rather inevitable — and we must agree with him. It feels essential, spontaneous, and above all natural, and is one of the film’s greatest strengths; a clear ending would seem contrived and cheap. The ambiguity is important because it affirms in the viewer what 2001 has been showing us all along: the infinity of time and space, so much deeper and broader than the human mind, so far beyond our limited comprehension. Throughout 2001, the characters are confounded by the inexplicable, the otherworldly, and the malevolent; with the ending, Kubrick turns his gaze directly on the viewer, questioning and undermining our own understanding. Nietzsche comes to mind: “If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

In Lovecraft’s work, which evokes a similar feeling, the focus is on terror; man is ultimately defeated. But Kubrick, it seems, is a humanist: the vague existential dread of 2001 culminates in a moment of transcendence, a feeling which is the film’s greatest achievement. For two hours, you are awake to the insubstantial and meaningless things of the world, because you glimpse the extraordinary infinity of our existence. For a minute, you wonder how you could ever go back to your life. For a second, you are cosmic, infinite, and omniscient, a being who is not afraid, who is not anxious, who has grasped and bent the universe: you have seen what man is, and what he can become. Really, we all are David; our Monolith is Art.