The evolution of mankind, according to Clarke and Kubrick.

Rating: Null/10 (4 April 2013)

I was a young married man in 1968. My wife and I saw this movie in the theater. I remember it well, as it ended we looked at each other, and one of us said, "We must have missed something." So we sat there, didn't move out of our seats, and watched it a second time. We still didn't "get it." I suspect a lot of theater-goers in 1968/1969 didn't "get" this movie.
Now I was able to see it again, thanks to the recently-released 10 DVD set of Kubrick films. I have the set on loan from my public library. Maybe just because I am older, have lived a lot, it all seems much clearer now.
The movie starts in prehistoric times when the most intelligent animals are black, hairy, and ape-like. They are meek, huddle together for comfort, and forage for food. One day they awake to find a black monolith in their midst, they crowd around it, they touch it, and soon after they "evolve", they learn to use bones as tools and clubs, they fight, they eat what they kill. These apes have become early man, by virtue of their encounter with the black monolith.
Is it a supreme being, God? Or is it a far advanced race of intelligent life that provided the monolith and its spark of evolution? I suppose the answer depends on whether one is a theist or an atheist.
Then, what many call the longest "fast-forward" in the history of film, the story advances to about the year 1999, and we join a space plane on its trip to a base on the moon. It seems modern instruments have detected an unusual magnetic field and they find buried 40 feet below the surface a black monolith, apparently just like the one the apes encountered millions of years earlier. The monolith is sending a strong signal towards the planet Jupiter.
So this 1999 encounter with a monolith must be considered to spark the next evolutionary step, and 18 months later we join a mission to Jupiter, five astronauts, three in a "hibernation" mode. They are led by Keir Dullea as Dr. Dave Bowman and with a state of the art, thinking and reasoning computer, the HAL 9000. There isn't much dialog in the whole movie and the most memorable is between Dave and HAL.
Finally, as Dave is the only survivor of the mission, there is yet another monolith, in orbit around Jupiter. Dave's encounter with it results in a 10-minute light and special effects show on film, representing his encounter, where he is placed into an environment designed to mimic home, much like we humans capture zoo animals and put them in a habitat that mimics their natural environment. After some accelerated aging, Dave is re-born as a type of star child that represents the next evolution of mankind, and as the movie ends is being sent back to Earth, ostensibly to preserve it from destruction by Earth's own inhabitants.
The DVD has an interesting special feature which is commentary by the two main actors, and their insights are very interesting. One thing they mention, it was filmed in 1965 and 1966.
Good movie. Even though many scenes are slow and very drawn out, in all it didn't seem as long as its running time would suggest.