A film about evolution

Rating: 10/10 (3 March 2014)

The title suggests science fiction, but "2001: A Space Odyssey" is more ambitious: it is a film about evolution. The film begins with a sequence entitled "The Dawn of Man", and ends with what might be called "The Dawn of Superman" in a Nietzschian sense. Nietzsche is deliberately evoked by music that accompanies the evolving higher life form: Richard Strauss' "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (the title of Nietzsche's famous treatise in which the notion of a "superman" is introduced). The choice of the planet Jupiter evokes the chief man-god of Mount Olympus in Greek mythology. Just as the discovery of the use of tools by the ape-man leads to modern man, the tool of a space vehicle leads to a higher life form. The former is the subject of history, the latter, the subject of "2001."
The crucifixion image formed when the monolith crosses the moons of Jupiter, along with the anguish on the astronaut's face, evokes still another man-god. The astronaut dies and is reborn. The black monolith is treated as deity by man: the ape-man worships it, and modern man places it in what is reminiscent of a chapel.
The ape-man is inspired by the memory of the monolith at the very moment he discovers the use of a bone as a weapon. Similarly, modern man is inspired by the monolith to attempt to devise a weapon The pointed comparison is made between the two warring groups of apes, and the U.S. - Soviet Union rivalry. The reference is to that underlying principle of evolution, survival of the fittest.
When man attempts to photograph the monolith, ear piercing shrieks shatter the air, suggesting the sacrilege of photographing a higher being. Is the monolith, then, a representation of deity? A case can be made but not a compelling one. The monolith is treated as a partner to man in the development of the new life form. Thus, the monolith seems to represent simply another life or energy force. The function of deity symbolism is to suggest the creation of a superman.
In the book by Arthur C. Clarke, three monoliths were probes sent out by beings of higher intelligence, in order to contact, educate, and promote the evolution of humanity. In the film, however, there is no way to distinguish between the monolith as a being in itself, or a probe.
The embryonic form floating through space at the end is the progeny of a mystical union between man and the other life force. This union involves extensive biological as well as religious imagery. The spaceship to Jupiter has the shape of a sperm with a large head and a long narrow tail. When the astronaut's spaceship burns up in the atmosphere of Jupiter, the image is directly that of insemination. The thick atmosphere parts before the spaceship, and the texture and image is that of a womb. Immediately thereafter we see the formation of the fetus (in red). When the astronaut ages and takes his last supper, he knocks over and shatters a glass, evoking the breaking of a glass in Jewish wedding ceremonies. When the fetus has matured, it takes the place of the dying astronaut in his bed, and moves directly into and through the monolith, which is the process of birth. The suggestion is that humanity is the father, the monolith (or the life force that it represents) the mother of the new breed. The sterility of the first part of the picture is in preparation for, indeed, accentuates the new kind of sexual union.
This union is in careful philosophic opposition to the alternative for the future, man-made intelligence in a computer. The yellow eye of the computer is in pale contrast to the blinding sun rising over the monolith. The computer is an extension of humanity -- it is the "sixth member of the crew", the "central nervous system of the ship," etc. The computer begins to malfunction in the vicinity of Jupiter, which is the province of the other force. Alternate explanations for the computer failure include a high magnetic effect upon the computer's electrical system, or schizophrenia caused by the impossible conflict of programming the computer to be always truthful to humans, and then requiring it to be untruthful about the purpose of the mission. Either way, the computer failure is a definite statement projecting a lesser role for machines in man's future.
The film is concerned with what physics refers to as "frame of reference." This is why it is difficult to exactly specify the nature of the monolith, and the final events of the film. What is seen depends on where you are looking from. This point is made in shots such as those of a spaceship docking (to a waltz by another composer named Strauss, Johann), or in the scene of the astronaut exercising in the spaceship.
Most of the film is not really science fiction at all, but a meticulously detailed representation of a very plausible near future. Stanley Kubrick, the director, has learned the lesson of Kafka, as to how to be absolutely convincing in portraying a projected world. The method is that of realism within the imagined framework. Only at the end does Kubrick depart from this guideline, in the so-called psychedelic sequence of entering the atmosphere and landing on Jupiter. This departure is necessitated by the attempt to present on the screen something beyond previous human experience.
The film is humbling to the human species, since it depicts that the current human form is not the point where evolution will stop, further, that there is some as yet unknown force that will be at least as important as man in the genesis of the higher life form.
Some have found the first part tedious and the last part cryptic, but for those with enough patience to reflect upon and respond to the whole, "2001" has been the dawn of a new millennium of film experience.