Essential Films: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Many say that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a film that only pretentious people actually like- and while this is true for some films, a glance at the immense cultural impact of 2001: A Space Odyssey seems to indicate that is not the case for this film. People love this movie. That it holds an eternal place in the sci-fi canon is undeniable; after all, it elevated the entire genre in film from pulp fiction to "high art". 2001 has polarized critical reaction: even with some hailing it as a masterpiece, it was described by prominent critics as being "monumentally unimaginative", "incredibly boring", "a major disappointment", "a failure", and "a disaster"¹. And yet critics and filmmakers alike have listed it as one of the greatest films of all time, appearing among the top 10 in BFI's international Sight & Sound poll². Ridley Scott himself describing it as the single greatest science fiction film ever made³ (a position that I would ascribe to Scott's own Blade Runner). Its special effects, for which it garnered an Academy Award⁴, still impress to this day: in fact, if I had encountered someone who had never seen a film before in their life, this would be the film I would show them, as a testament to the power of the filmmaking medium. Still, breathtaking imagery is surely not all that has elevated this film to such a status. What else is it about 2001 that causes it to leave such a lasting impression?

It strikes me as odd that this film is titled 2001: A Space Odyssey and yet the first twenty minutes have absolutely to nothing to do with space travel. Why are we wasting our time looking at apes who have virtually no relevance to the rest of the plot? To understand this, we have to turn towards the one common feature in all four segments of the movie: the monolith. Of all of the events that surround each appearance of the monolith, the ascent of a species from one level of intelligence to another is the most prominent. This constitutes the basic concept of evolution as the development of something simple to something more advanced; here, that concept is instilled with the qualities of the mystical and transcendent, lending itself a whole new meaning. The story of 2001 is one that asks questions more often than it provides answers: questions about alien life, artificial intelligence, and the relentless progress of technology. But standing back and observing the narrative as a whole, there are some questions that seem to resound more strongly than others, particularly questions such as: "where did we come from?" and "where are we going?". These questions provide context and significance for the dialogue-free opening and closing segments of the film, and redefine the entire film as a "human odyssey", chronicling our humble beginnings as a species and offering a suggestion as to what we might become in the future. This idea is confirmed by the film's choice of music- the classical piece which underscores the ape's discovery of tool usage is Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra", which takes its title from the novel of the same name by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which discusses this very concept of humanity's ascent to superiority. 

So what does "evolution" mean within the context of this movie? Within the "Dawn of Man" sequence, we see apes encounter the monolith and, through some kind of mystical knowledge the monolith instills, they ascend from herbivores to carnivores through the usage of the bone as a tool and a weapon. When this weapon is thrown into the air, we are whisked millennia into the future by the most famous jump-cut in cinematic history, where the bone is juxtaposed by another weapon: a satellite with a gun mounted on it. Early drafts of the script reveal this to be one of many weapons platforms⁵ that are shown to us throughout the following sequence, indicating mankind has reached a nuclear stalemate. Presented with a leap between two vastly different worlds that occurs within that split-second, audiences are at this point desperately searching for a connection, and the tedious dialogue of the scenes to follow only serves to tease us in the absence of an immediate answer. 

Film critic Roger Ebert, among others, asserts that the artificial intelligence HAL 9000 is more human-like than its flesh-and-blood companions, who speak in robotic banalities⁶: one may here consider the stony-faced expression of astronaut Frank Poole during his birthday message from his parents. And while this is true to an extent, to view things this way undercuts the character development of the supposed protagonist David Bowman. I propose an alternative: that Dave Bowman is the embodiment of an everyman. Dave's progress in the narrative often has to do with not what he does, but what he learns- hence a perfect stand- in for the audience that is learning new information right alongside him, even as we are eventually rewarded for our patience by means of a journey beyond the stars. Dave is creative, inquisitive, and at times, even heroic. His simplicity thus functions as a perfect counterpart to the intelligence and complexity of the film's most intriguing character HAL, who isn't even introduced until the third act. 

Science fiction novelist Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the script for the film with director Stanley Kubrick, writes that it was Kubrick's original intention to name the super-computer "Athena", after the Greek goddess of wisdom⁷. Though this character was eventually rewritten as HAL, the name by which we know him today, the parallels to the concepts of wisdom and reason still exist. HAL's ever-present single eye harkens back to Ulysses' encounter with the cyclops, a character associated intelligence and the use of tools, thus establishing the connection between the film and its classical namesake. While Dave operates as man at his simplest essence, HAL serves as an allegory for the greatest of man's achievements, the sum and total product of man's intellectual pursuits. Yet even reason at its purest is shown to be flawed, and it is HAL's recognition of his own flaws that causes him to malfunction and embark on a frenzy of murder (even Kubrick hints at this as the reason behind HAL's actions⁸). Incidentally, these are the scenes that prove to be the most thrilling in the movie, as a moment of tense revelation is immediately followed by an intermission, and the murder of Frank Poole is graced with some of the most brilliant editing in the entire film. 

If the movie began with the evolution of the ape, what follows is Dave Bowman's evolution, and in order to evolve, Dave must learn to progress beyond simple reason and understanding and embrace what he does not understand. Only then will truly higher knowledge be revealed to him, as demonstrated by his unplugging of HAL and his subsequent encounter with the "stargate". According to writer Donald MacGregor, this is a continuation of the Nietzschean themes hinted at earlier on in the film: more specifically, it is an expression of the idea of the Dionysian and Apollonian states of man. The Dionysian is man in primitive state- embracing joy, ecstasy, emotion and adventure, while modern man, by contrast, embraces the Apollonian state of leisure, contemplation, logic and reason. Contrast, here, the apes' reverent and tentative approach to the monolith and the astronauts' calm and arrogant approach, also noting how this is the only scene in the film that employs visible use of a handheld camera. Nietzsche envisions man's next stage, the superman, as a return to the Dionysian spirit, and the final images of the film play out accordingly⁹. In order to fully ascend to a state of higher being, Bowman must become like unto a child, and the convergence of the sperm-like design of the spaceship and the round "egg cell" appearance of Jupiter only enhances this visual metaphor of rebirth. 

In a 1968 interview with Playboy, Kubrick stated that the concept of God was at the heart of 2001, but also that it was a concept of God far removed from the beliefs of mainstream monotheism¹⁰. In many senses, this is what the film desires to be: a spiritual experience, of sorts. Kubrick has, on numerous occasions, invited multiple interpretations as to the film's meaning¹¹. The intent of the movie is that you go into it with the expectation that it is a mystery, that you're not supposed to be able to fully figure it out. And like Dave Bowman, once we as the audience accept this, a new dimension unfolds for us. 2001 presents a world that is so technologically advanced that space travel is little more than a simple vacation. But unlike Dr. Heywood Floyd, we have the privilege of being able to marvel at the beautiful scenery that is, for him and all the others on the space station, mundane. Kubrick slows down the pace to an almost painfully sluggish speed, but he does so to open up our ability to focus- not on story, but on the music and the images. In a film like this, sometimes all you can do is sit back and let the journey overwhelm you with wonder: and looking at a visionary display of anti-gravity, a blazing tunnel of rainbow lasers, and the most breathtaking shots of spaceships you'll ever see, it's not hard to see why.

Sources:

¹Hofsess, John. "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love 'Barry Lyndon'". The New York Times. 11 January 1976. Print.
²"The 50 Greatest Films of All Time". Sight & Sound. British Film Institute, September 2012. Web. Retrieved on 24 September 2015.
³Kazan, Casey. "Ridley Scott: 'After 2001- A Space Odyssey, Science Fiction is Dead'". The Daily Galaxy. The Daily Galaxy, 10 July 2009. Web. Retrieved on 24 September 2015.
⁴The Academy Awards Database. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2015. Web. Retrieved on 24 September 2015.
⁵p.181-182. Walker, Alexander, et al. Stanley Kubrick, Director. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2000. Print. 
⁶Ebert, Roger. "2001: A Space Odyssey". Chicago Sun-Times. 12 April 1968. Print.
⁷Clarke, Arthur C. The Lost Worlds of 2001. New Jersey: Gregg Press, 1971. Print.
⁸Gelmis, Joseph. "An Interview with Stanley Kubrick." The Film Director as Superstar. New York: Doubleday and Company. 1970. Print.
⁹MacGregor, Donald. "2001; or, How One Film-Reviews with a Hammer". The Kubrick Site. n.p., 2013. Web. Retrieved on 26 September 2015.
¹⁰p. 49. Phillips, Gene D., ed. Stanley Kubrick: Interviews. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. Print. 
¹¹Gelmis.