2001 A Space Odysse - Long And Probably Boring, Read At Your Own Risk!

So I watched 2001: A space Odyssey a few weeks ago. I have been pondering it's meaning. It is filled with many unusual elements to it. One being lack of dialog. It is 40 mins into the movie before there is any dialog and the last 40 min are also void of dialog. Add four min for the credits and that is 84 min of the 120 the movie runs. When there is any dialog it is very sparse and very mechanical and to the point.
During all this wordless time in the movie there is some strange music, psychedelic imagery, and at times complete silence. With the audience of today I doubt any film maker could make that long of a movie with no action or dialog.
For those of you who may have not seen it I will offer a synopsis of the movie. It opens to a tribe of premagnuim man in Africa. This tribe is at a watering hole and are run off by another tribe. After fleeing to a safe place this tribe is surprised with the appearance of a monolith (a rectangular door like entrance to space or perhaps another dimension. The monolith is black and full of stars). At first the tribe is very scared and flee from it, but as they soon realize there is no threat from the monolith they begin to get closer to investigate. There is one tribe member who seems more intelligent then the rest and as he looks at a pile of bleached bones it's as if he has been given the idea of how to use one in a new way, as if the monolith has given him the idea. He picks up a long thick bone in his hand and begins to hit the rest of the bones in the pile. Man has made it's first tool. The monolith disappears and the tribe used the tool in order to kill pray and no longer hunger for want of food. You see the tribe again at the water hole. The other tribe is ready to attack, but one unlucky member encounters the tribe member who used a tool first and pays the price as other members of the tribe take queue and also use objects to beat him to death. you see the bone being thrown into the air and the scene effortlessly changes to one of space with a ship in orbit.
You see the ship in space and see a man who is traveling in an empty "space plane". There is a long scene that shows space and this man falling asleep on the plane. He arrives to a colony on the moon. He meets a group of people and you hear words for the first time. He is asked why is on the colony, there have been rumors of a viral outbreak, but he politely tells them he can't talk about it. Next he is in a room of official looking people explaining that a buried artifact has been found on the moon. It has been dated to 4 million years previous to the year 2000 (also the same time the first scene with the tribe had taken place.), and he is there to lead a crew to investigate. Next there is a group of people in spacesuits wondering around the moon. As they approach the burial site the monolith appears. Man has come so far and having become master of earth, is not afraid and approach the monolith with no fear. As the crew comes closer a mind numbing beeping comes out of the monolith and you see the crew writhing around in pain trying to cover their ears.
You see a ship in space and the words "Eighteen Months Later" appear on the screen. You are taken inside the craft and see a man running in a circle that is rotating. As he runs he passes vessels that are obviously housing crew members in a long term hibernation. Then you see two men sitting in front of a monitor. They are watching a BBC report on a space mission that is heading to Titan, the dominate moon of Jupiter. The report goes on to say that a crew of scientists has been put in hibernation for the four months the journey will take. It tells of the two crew members that will be awake during the voyage (the two men watching the broadcast) and the supercomputer HAL 9000 that is running the ship. There is also a small interview with HAL by the anchor. HAL is programed to use logic and limited human emotion to react to situations. He has a monotone male voice. There is questioned from HAL to a crew member named Dave about the secrecy of the mission and why the hibernating scientists were trained separately and put into hibernation even before the journey began and about the strange events on the moon 18 months earlier. Dave brushes it off. HAL indicates that the com system is going to fail in a matter of days. Dave and the other crew member get permission from mission control to go fix the problem so they will not loose communication. While trying to fix the com system the two astronauts can find nothing wrong with it. They come in from space and tell HAL that there is nothing wrong with the system to which HAL tells them that no 9000 series comp has ever made a mistake and that it must be human error. Meanwhile a communication comes in from mission control informing them that the twin HAL 9000 unit back on earth can find nothing wrong with the com unit. This creates a very perplexing situation. How can one be right and one wrong considering the perfect record of the 9000 series. The two crew members go to a minirover spacecraft where HAL can not hear them to discuss the situation. They both agree that HAL 9000 aboard the ship has to be turned off and manual control of the ship must be implemented. If something as simple as the com unit being damaged is wrong then there could be a much larger problem within HAL's programing and such an important mission can not be risked. Unbeknown to the crew members HAL is reading their lips despite not being able to hear them he figures out their plan. While doing routine maintenance alone outside the ship Frank is suddenly cut off from the ship by a rover. Dave seeing this rushes into another rover to chase after him as his body floats into space. Frank moves around a little in an effort to breath, but soon Dave is chasing after a limp and more then likely dead body. Dave finally reaches the man and takes a hold of him using the "arms" of the rover. He carries him back and approaches the airlock doors he exited the ship from. "Open the doors HAL." no response. "I said open the doors HAL." HAL them informs Dave he can not open the doors he knows of the plan to shut him off and must stay in operation to complete the mission. Dave begins to to get angry with HAL and continues to order the doors be open. HAL tells Dave that the conversation is pointless and that it is ending and says goodbye. Dave decides to go through the emergency door but sees that in his haste to save Frank he has forgotten his helmet. While all this drama is happening outside of the ship inside HAL has shut off all life support to the sleeping crew members and they die. Now Dave is the only crew member left. We can see what happens when we become to dependent on our tools and that tolls that become to human will make the same mistakes we do. Dave takes the rover to the emergency doors and then takes a deep breath (which would actually kill him in reality. If entering the vacuum of space you should actually exhale all the air in your lungs so they don't burst from the pressure) and flushes himself into the airlock and closes the doors while quickly opening them on the other side. He gets into the ship and quickly puts on a helmet. He then heads directly for HALS hard drive and begins to shut HAL down. HAL begins pleading for his life. He expresses that he is afraid and that he is loosing his thoughts. He pleads with Dave to not shut him down that he has made some bad choices and that he is fine now. Despite his plea Dave shuts down HAL. As soon as he is shut down a monitor flicks on and a man begins to say that the purpose of the mission was with held from the awake crew members but known by HAL. They are going to Titan because it was discovered that a signal was sent there by the monolith on the moon. Dave now feels the burden of trying to discover what there may be on Titan. He is the only crew member left alive.
Again words appear on the screen, this time they say, "Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite". Dave is back in the rover approaching Titan when the monolith appears again. Dave goes into the monolith and is taken on a mind numbing trip through and unknown means of transportation. There are flashing lights and strange images the whole time. Finally he arrives in a room decorated with King George style furnishings. It looks like a upper end hotel room. Dave suddenly finds himself out of the rover and walking in his spacesuit in the room. He hears something coming from the bedroom and enters in seeing a figure eating. He soon discovers it is an older version of himself. All of a sudden he is the older man. He is eating what has begin to be known as "man's last supper". He reaches for the salt and breaks the glass on the table. He notices that while the glass is broken the liquid inside remains in tact. He hears breathing and looks over and sees a very old man in the bed next to him trying to breath, near death. Again he recognises his own face. As before no sooner has he see himself is he the dying man in the bed. At the foot of the bed the monolith appears again. He is using what little strength he has left reaching toward it. He enters the monolith and is then inside a clear circle as a fetus. He is viewing earth from space, he has become a "star child". Then the movie ends.
What does all of this mean? Perhaps this is just Kubrick on drugs! He really is very eccentric and some of his other work is difficult for me to watch. The only other work of his I very much like is AI, but then it is a collaboration with Spielberg, who ended up doing most of it due to Kubrick's death.
After reading many online suggestions of what this could mean I am able to present what I think it could symbolize. Kubrick himself refused to offer any explanation to what the movie meant saying that each movie goer should draw their own conclusion and that he would not influence that interpretation with his explanation.
So the beginning is an obvious major example of man's "evolution". Kind of a do or die. Man needed to learn to use tools or die. With the help of the monolith man is able to master tools and find a new way to survive. man also discovers murder and domination, however when this happened the monolith is not present as to suggest that murder and a thirst for power is solely man's creation.
Fast forward to 2001. Man has completely mastered the earth and is now reaching for the stars. We have created many great "tools" to not only survive but make life much easier. Again the monolith has appeared on the moon. It is discovered that it has been there millions of years, so we know it can't be ours. All most as if the "visitors" have been watching our progress from afar since they first made contact with us.
Flash forward yet again to man's mission further into space. Our tools have become so developed that we no longer need even ourselves. Everyone, save two, of the crew are deep asleep. The two people that are awake are so complacent that they spend their time in mundane things such as tanning, playing chess, and literally running in circles. Man is only there for ornamental purposes. Instead of using tools to aid us we cannot survive without tools and in a way they have become greater then us. We have essential lost what made us greater then the tools.
HAL goes crazy! I think this is an important part of the story because it shows that despite are amazing advances we are still very fragile and helpless in the setting of the universe as a whole. Ironically it also shows how man's tools have become very human as shown through HAL's repeated pleas for his life and saying he is afraid. And in the end ultimately reduced to a very weal and simple childlike state before his "end". While showing our greatest weakness, this scenario also shows are greatest strength. Despite impossible odds of survival "man" still found a way to not only simply survive but to ultimately progress.
Moving forward with his mission Dave approaches the monolith in space and is taken into a very advanced mode of travel, again showing man's inexperience in the big scheme of things and despite large movements forward we are still very infantile. In the end Dave ends up in a generically familiar setting of a hotel room. A desperate act by the observers who created the monolith to make whomever should arrive feel more at "home". Dave is presented with a literal representation of his or any man's life. We also don't know if Dave has been there a matter of mins or years as suggested by his progressive aging. Again suggesting that time is infinite and that a single person's lifespan really is just a blink of the eye in the universal time line.
Ultimately we see Dave "die" and then be reborn as a child of the universe looking down on the earth where he once began, thus coming full circle, but also showing that death is not the end but simply another step in man's progression to becoming the master's of the universe as well.
While this movie is an odd way to inspire a person to think about our place in the universe and that this life is a very small step in our progression to becoming what our creator has made us to be.
I don't think Kubrick and myself could ever have any intense discussions on man due to major personality differences I can see why this film is considered to be one of film's most important contributions. It does things that other films dare not do. Leave us alone in "space" with only our thoughts to keep us company. If we could be in space it would be silent. A self imposed deprivation chamber that goes on forever. I like the idea that Kubrick is suggesting that we are not alone in this universe and that there is an unseen eye always watching us and helping us in subtle ways take the progressive steps we need to. I like that this movie suggests that death is really only the beginning and that this life is still part of our "childhood" eternally speaking. A time for us to learn and progress and make mistakes, but that, like a good parent would, our celestial caretakers are guiding us to our ultimate self. It's a nice idea that one day we will be in the position to easily look back at our beginnings and finally understand why we had to go through this life and that it brought us to such a wonderful place in our eternal progression. While I don't agree with all the imagery used by Kubrick I guess I have to assume a Machiavellian attitude about this one and say the end justifies the means. While I think most people in my generation and epically the current one would see this show as boring, pointless, and a waste I feel that there will be a few of us who will see it and think about it and maybe even write a blog about it.

Yours, K.