The Biggest Fast Forward

Rating: 8/10 (6 February 2009)

What the meaning of the black monolith is in 2001: A Space Odyssey has been puzzling moviegoers for generations. I confess I haven't any better idea than any of the others who have written on this board. I guess Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke wanted everyone to make their own evaluation. A little more evidence could have helped.
The awesome visual affects of 2001 for which the film won its only Oscar in 1968 have blinded a lot of viewers to the ultimate incomprehensibility of the plot. That big black rock means something a whole lot different to the prehistoric caveman than to the futuristic astronauts. To one it means power, the other understanding. It's like some all powerful creator has left this touchstone for mankind to take another leap forward.
The film begins with the cave people who are struggling to survive against animal creatures who are better equipped than they are for dominance. But contact with the rock, so glaringly out of place from the surroundings awakens the latent intelligence in the cave folk and they stage a comeback against their foes. It's the beginning of man's dominance.
In the biggest fast forward in screen history, we are now in the future and another of these things has been discovered on a moon of Jupiter, the first sign of intelligent life away from earth. Scientists Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood and three other scientists in cryogenic suspension are sent to investigate. Remember we haven't discovered warp drive yet.
Civilization may have taken too far a leap forward because these guys are in the hands of an all powerful computer named HAL who controls the ship and their very lives by definition. What's supposed to be a tool for man now is his dominator.
When man does come in contact with that monolith on a Jupiter moon, my own interpretation is that the contact represents an all powerful creator telling man to reflect on what he has achieved and to warn him to not go too fast forward in the future. The monoliths represent signposts, like checkpoints in a race to God only knows what end.
I'm always leery of rating a film like 2001 too high when the plot is so vague and speculative. But the special effects and Kubrick's use of classical music to create that space ballet just so dwarf the human beings involved, in effect the film itself is a warning. And all that music was in the public domain so MGM didn't have to lay out big bucks for a composer.
I always favor story over spectacle which is why I can never give 2001: A Space Odyssey the highest rating. But when the spectacle is as awesome as what Stanley Kubrick gives us, you just sit there amazed.
Of course 2001 came and went and instead of reaching for the rest of the solar system and beyond, mankind regressed into barbarism with the most notable event being a planned massed murder. Mankind needs to touch the monolith and make another leap forward. Maybe Kubrick should have looked farther ahead and called his film, 2101: A Space Odyssey.
I hope we touch the monolith before that.