The masterwork of Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, has put many intelligent moviegoers in a state of stupor. We’ll talk about the theories underlying what might be happening (or not) in this important science fiction movie.
You want to enjoy Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 epic masterpiece if you’re like many aficionados of science fiction or great cult movies in general. You could even feel as though you ought to, but you just can’t grasp it.
You can’t even find any logic or reason in at all, much less like or appreciate it, once you get beyond its long, monotonous shots, its perplexing cuts and sequences, and its lack of dialogue.
Fortunately, there are fully valid and understandable solutions, or at the very least, very reasonable explanations, for the majority of the prevailing questions around 2001.
Before you view it on your preferred streaming service, read on. The answers given here should, perhaps, help you understand this enigmatic being better and make the movie more enjoyable. Spoilers ahead for this straightforward explanation of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Background Information on The Odyssey
The answers to the most, if not all, of the frequently asked questions about 2001: A Space Odyssey may be gleaned from a few essential aspects about the movie and its production before getting into the details.
The movie is a product of its time in many ways.
As comparison to modern movies, movies from the middle of the 20th century progressed more slowly. The fact that Kubrick also intended to create a slowing-down effect for a large portion of the movie is only accentuated by contemporary audiences’ preferences for intense action and a quick pace.
Similarly, technologies were far less developed and awareness of metaphysical ideas was much less widespread, which may have lessened the impact of things that were novel to viewers at the time on present audiences.
Kubrick never intended to give everything away.
Instead, the director intended viewers to connect the dots and come to their own conclusions about the movie in order to have a more intimate understanding of and connection to its deeper meanings and messages.
Are their messages and meanings spiritual, cosmic, or both? Kubrick frequently gives the choice to the audience.
“2001: What It Means, and How It Was Created,” an essay in The New Yorker, notes that the movie “takes for granted a broad societal tolerance, if not a desire, for enigma, as well as the time and tendency for dissecting interpretive puzzles.” Even though you watched it again, you didn’t figure it out, but you did become accustomed to its mysteries.
This film was made with the help of Arthur C. Clarke.
The short tale “The Sentinel” by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who was also an engineer and shipwreck investigator, served as a loose inspiration for the movie 2001.
Due to the extensive scientific debate and study that went into making this movie, it has a future vibe but also feels nearly historic, or as The New Yorker article puts it, “like a historical piece about a period that has yet to happen.”
The Birth of Man, Part I of 2001| A Space Odyssey
Let’s discuss about the movie’s opening sequence, which features the apes.
What Is the Relationship Between the Opening Sequence with the Primates and the Monolith and the Rest of the Movie?
Two ape tribes yell at one another in the opening scenes, which are set in the Pleistocene era. Then, in the middle of the night, they hear a startling noise. One of the tribes wakes up in the morning to find the monolith, a massive, black object buried beneath the earth and towering over them.
They examine its flawless, shining surface and exact angles with curious hands as they stare transfixed, until something—possibly a new awareness—seems to travel from the monolith to the apes. One of the apes suddenly uses a nearby bone as a weapon to kill one of his opponents. Later, the apes discover more effective and proactive uses for the bone.
The audience is supposed to assume that what they are seeing is the start of society as we know it. According to the premise of this tale, alien meddling rather than Darwin’s interpretation of natural selection led to evolution.
Why the Three Monoliths, You Ask?
As a result, the monolith acts as both a plot device and a foreshadowing device, informing the audience that outside intelligences, presumably aliens, are influencing the growth of human awareness and civilisation.
Later in the movie, another monolith looks just like the first. It makes an appearance in 2001 on the moon, foreshadowing the space adventure that takes up the majority of the movie. When astronaut Dave Bowman nearly collides with the object as it circles Jupiter, it reappears for a third time and takes him and his spacecraft into a space warp.
The viewer can now safely infer that Dave has been abducted by the entities who sent these enigmatic objects and that all three monoliths have the same origin.
At this point, it is safe to speculate that the aliens who created this thing may have placed its likeness on Earth thousands of years ago as part of a larger scheme including the development of humanity.
Part II of 2001: A Space Odyssey: The Jupiter Mission
The film then follows a small team as they travel to Jupiter.
Why Does the Neanderthal Man’s Airborne Bone Look Like a Space Missile?
The first part of the movie shows a crucial period in the history of Homo sapiens, particularly when man first became aware of utilising tools.
The second part of the movie opens with a space shuttle, illustrating what humans have done with that knowledge over the course of the subsequent four million years and how far his ability to make and use tools has advanced.
Here, it is implied subtextually that the audience is about to witness a transition to yet another stage of human evolution.
Why Is the Movie So Slow and Lengthy?
The most common explanation for why Kubrick made the movie go so slowly is that it induces in viewers an almost meditative state that makes it easier for them to be transported into the vastness of outer and inner space that the movie implies.
Like stars scattered throughout infinity, Kubrick scatters a tiny number of crucial plot pieces throughout a vastness of scenery and emotion. In other words, it seems as though he was trying to give the spectator the impression that they are space explorers, something an earthling cannot imagine without a more relatable and concrete example like time.
Use the movie’s second section’s opening scene as an illustration. The director Kubrick probably meant for the slow-motion footage of a gigantic space shuttle floating through space to have the following effects on the audience:
to unground viewers from their familiar experiences and secure perceptions of space and time
to convey to viewers the expanse of space and the feeling of being weightless within it.
to demonstrate human achievement in creating a device that can transport them from their home planet to the wide unknown.
Where and why is the spaceship travelling?
The spacecraft is headed towards Jupiter because humanity has advanced to the point where it can understand that the monolith on the moon is made by extraterrestrials and that it is sending messages to the sun’s largest planet.
What Causes HAL to Ruin the Mission?
At a certain point in the ship’s journey, HAL 9000, the friendly, human-like supercomputer constructed on Earth in the image of man to steer the spacecraft through space and keep the crew alive, begins to go wild. In addition to killing crew members and cutting off communication with Earth, “He” seizes total command of the ship’s operations and alters course.
The ship’s computer attempts to comfort and reassure David Bowman, the only crew member still alive, despite what appears to be an irregular, even sadistic, malfunction.
It turns out that there hasn’t been any malfunction at all, and HAL isn’t even in charge of any of its own acts. Instead, this process of creating man has been subverted by an outside force: those same unnamed entities that seem to have “made” humans from apes by endowing the stupid animals with the ability to make tools.
2001: A Space Odyssey: Part III: Jupiter and Beyond the Infinity
The movie’s final act becomes really bizarre.
David left the ship and entered a bedroom. Why?
In order to achieve their goals in bringing him there, aliens would need to design life-support systems that would sustain a human visitor’s life for as long as possible.
Whatever their motives, it would also make sense to make their “guest” as at home as possible by putting him in a more familiar environment.
The theory of relativity, which states that the most recent signals from Earth received through the monoliths may have been from the neoclassical era, is a straightforward explanation for the bygone era depicted in the bedroom’s design.
Its disjunctive appearance near Jupiter, where it would be the last thing any human would expect, produces a distinctly disturbing effect that throws the viewer and Dave off-balance despite the spotless, accommodating, almost luxurious setting.
While the plot’s aliens may have designed this environment to make their visitors more at ease, the director may have had different goals in mind, wanting to dispel any illusions the audience may have had that this place is even the slightest bit familiar.
What Does the Enormous Baby Mean at the End?
A well-known scene of death and rebirth may be seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey’s concluding minutes. The following is the order of the events:
With a sequence of jump cuts, Dave explores the chronological events of his life.
Dave imagines himself as an elderly, feeble guy on his deathbed as he lies in bed.
Dave finds himself in his dying body in one final jump cut.
We lose Dave.
Dave is the huge baby’s reincarnation.
Dave’s transformation into the elderly, feeble, and dying version of himself as a condensation of time could be explained by Kubrick’s explanation of the bedroom as a habitat in a zoo. The aliens then transform him into some kind of advanced, immortal superbeing and send him back to Earth once he passes away, terminating his usefulness for research.
This implies that, like the bone in the opening sequence did for the apes, the newly evolved Dave will be a tool for mankind’s next evolutionary leap.
The baby appears to be the same size as the Earth from the observer’s perspective as he looks at it and then jettisons towards it. The inference is that Dave, as a representative of his species, or humans as a whole, has now transcended once more. This time, he changes from being an Earthborn infant to being a child of the universe, or, as it is put in an article in The New Yorker, “the foetal Star Child betokening the new race.”
The baby’s gaze shifts to the audience in the last seconds of the movie, completing the circle between the past and present, origin and destination, ancestors and descendants, creation and creator.
What Use Does the Cascading Color Spectrum Serve?
The rainbow of hues that cascades towards the audience at the conclusion of the movie is designed to suggest a voyage across a long period of time and distance, breaking down barriers of space and time.
The viewer is now speeding towards their own evolutionary destiny as Baby Dave is now careening into Earth. It visually implies that the audience must now take in and understand the movie in order to determine their place in the universe.
Summary
In his essay “2001 – The Monolith and the Message,” Roger Ebert characterises Stanley Kubrick’s voluminous, irrational, and ambiguous epic as a “parable about the nature of man.” This viewpoint may allow for the best understanding and appreciation of this deceptively straightforward and little piece.
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