Not a religious movie in the conventional sense

Rating: 10/10 (26 August 2010)

2001 is a meditation on Western (high) culture. Such high culture is not something that most people experience on an everyday basis but it has a subtle, pervasive influence on all our lives. The movie wants to bring us on a journey through questions on where we come from, where we are now and where we are going from a Western perspective. The movie is ambiguous because it does not seek to provide answers but asks us to think about how these deep spiritual questions fit into the Western world view.
Nothing in the film hints at the existence of other cultural views. This is not a criticism of the film, this is just what the film is about. In the near future presented to us Western culture is all triumphant. Science and engineering are raising Man to new heights. The people portrayed in the movie appear confident about the intellectual/spiritual basis on which their world is constructed. People are calm, measured and rational. The interactions between the Americans (representing a capitalist view of freedom) and the Russians (representing a communist view of freedom) are there to remind us (subtly) about the possible roads that humanity can follow. But both viewpoints belong to the Western framework of thought.
God, as a real explanation of our role in the world, died during the Enlightenment. This movie proposes that it is Western science and technology that will lead us to a new state of existence and has the potential to destroy us. It is the closest that I have seen Western ideas portrayed as almost religious.