Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)

And now for the customary preamble. This response to 2001 is rather less intelligent and organized than the usual masterpieces normally posted... if I do say so myself. (Wow, I just managed to be self-deprecating and arrogant all in one little sentence). Read on if you will, and by all means do NOT watch the film. It has great and ambiguous meaning and has some very interesting themes, but it's long and slow as hell and will make you want to die by sticking a blunt object in your eye.

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Derek Rose’s On the Meanings of the Final Sequence, is very informal and creates a sense of conversation that leads naturally to a response. His writing is based on one key paragraph:

"This scene at the end of 2001 is not about meaning, however, but about effect. Whatever effect it may have on you will lead to its meaning, and it for is this reason that this film can be interpreted so many different ways. Personally, I get the feeling of how ephemeral life really is, about how quickly one passes through the different stages of life." (Rose )

As Rose' s thinking follows, my personal viewing of this final scene lead to me to a different meaning. The effect the film had was based on my thought process influenced by my experiences. This is concurrent with Kubrick's comment:

"I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophical content ...I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does ... you're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film." (Kubrick)

The end sequence and the film in its entirety are meant to create an effect that evokes a question. The viewer's answer, or lack thereof, creates the meaning. The final scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey reinforced my feeling that the film may indicate that man is obsessed with the appearance of progress. Man concentrates almost solely on his own apparent improvement and status in the universe, while never making any true progress. The themes of ultimate importance remain the same throughout the story’s representation of the history of man. The apes become man when they become territorial, combative, violent, and develop a sense of superiority over other creatures. In the apes evolution, there has been no new joy, hope or love except for selfish gain.

Man’s need and desire to investigate space and the monolith are another representtion of selfish desire. They wish to increase man’s knowledge and their own personal status at the expense of human contact. Dave’s only contact with his family is through flat and lifeless television screen. In this sense, it is even possible that HAL, as a pillar of progress, was created as much to reduce error as to provide companionship. HAL’s transformation from computer to man-like being occurs when he becomes emotional, more specifically, malicious and greedy. The computer, made in man’s image, produces man’s behaviours. HAL represents technological progress perfectly, but this creation has not escaped man’s vices. All of this progress is clearly meaningless. This is seen clearly while the astraonauts jog in circles, play chess, and eat shapeless unidentifiable food. The area moving and acting merely to survive for the sake of the space mission. HAL is used to represent the meaninglessness of this progress as he sings the children’s song while he “dies”. The song becomes less and less meaningful as it becomes more obviously electronically produced.

Human action and emotion lose all meaning as they are used to further progress with no regard for moral improvement. This is also seen at the end of the film. Dave grows older so quickly at the end of his life seeing how his progress has gotten him nowhere (literally he is in the same room the whole time) perhaps as a punishment for man’s rush to find progress during life. In the end he dies and becomes a fetus with none of the “progress” he worked so hard for during life. He starts again because he, and all mankind are still struggling with envy, control and power issues, deceit, arrogance, and murder for survival. 2001 shows evolution clearly as a a computer as sophistocated as HAL is created from the humble beginnings of the apes. This is the ultimate sign of apparent progress as even HAL struuggles with the same issues as the apes. There has, in fact, been no progress at all.