Arthur C. Clarke died last week at the age of 90. This means, among other things, that the venerable science fiction writer won’t be around to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release, this June, of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. A collaborative project between himself and director Stanley Kubrick, 2001 has ingrained itself into the collective consciousness of western pop culture in a way that few other movies can even hope to approach. Yet, as it enters mid-life, it still manages to challenge audience expectation and critical interpretation alike.
It’s a challenging film, there’s no doubt about it. From the start, viewers complained about what they perceived to be its excessive length and slow pace. “Morally pretentious, intellectually obscure and inordinately long,” one critic wrote of it in 1968, while another dismissed it as “trash masquerading as art.” A bemused Rock Hudson stormed out of its première demanding, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”
It’d be a pleasure, Rock.
First, let’s admit that, even today, 2001 remains a challenge to watch. It’s not so much that it is a long film — at 140 minutes, it’s hardly excessive — but that it appears to be. This is due, in part, to Kubrick’s deliberately slow pacing, forcing the viewer to pay attention to each and every scene, but also to the virtual absence of any dialogue in the final hour. In short, you pay your money on the way in, but you’re expected to work in return.
If you are willing to work with 2001, it pays off handsomely. Kubrick has always refused to explain the film’s “meaning.” “You are free to speculate, as you wish, about the philosophical and allegorical meanings,” he said shortly after its release. Clarke, by contrast, later expanded on the original film’s narrative in a series of subsequent novels (2001, 2010, 2061 and 3001), yet the movie version itself persistently continues to defy easy decoding.
But, as its 40th anniversary approaches, here’s one more effort to do just that. Let’s start with the monolith, the strange, smooth rectangular structure that’s at the heart of the story. In total, it makes four appearances: to a group of ape-men in Africa, c. four million years ago; to a group of humans on the moon, in 1999; as a “stargate” to Dave Bowman, sole survivor aboard the spaceship Discovery after his tussle with the computer HAL 9000; and once more to Bowman, as he lies on the verge of death in the strange “hotel room” somewhere on the far side of the universe.
What is this monolith? Literal interpretations have suggested that it is a device that somehow alters the brains of those early ape-men, enabling them to develop tools for the first time; a radio transmitter that relays a coded message to Jupiter that humans had finally travelled across space to the moon; a sort of wormhole that allows Bowman to travel unimaginable distances to the home planet of monolith’s creators; and the means by which Bowman is transformed and transported back to Earth as the fetus-like “starchild.”
Well, maybe. Or perhaps it’s wiser to go with Kubrick’s idea that 2001 works on the level of allegory. If so, in each of its manifestations the monolith might better be understood as a challenge, a test. Its first appearance “forces” our distant ancestors to view the world around them differently, and in doing so, they see new uses for something as simple as a bone. It is this invention of tools that sets human evolution along its distinct path over the next few million years.
Fast forward to 1999. What are the implications of space travel? Through a series of images, Kubrick and Clarke suggest that it reduces us once more to a level of infancy. In zero-gravity conditions, we have to relearn how to walk and how to go to the bathroom and eat what looks like baby food. In short, the rules of our existence are reset.
The monolith discovered on the moon is a test of how humanity intends to respond to such challenges. Our initial response, shown here onboard the Discovery mission to Jupiter, is to rely on technology. HAL views and treats the human crew as mere infants, praising their slow and clumsy efforts to master chess and art (symbols of human accomplishment). HAL soon comes to question their ability to carry out the ship’s mission. In the dramatic conflict that follows, what’s important is not so much the eventual triumph of “man over machine,” but our realization that human evolution based on technology has absolute limits.
And so, to the film’s finale, “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.” Rather than a physical journey to the other side of the universe, it’s possible — indeed, plausible — to view this as a kaleidoscopic trip deep into Bowman’s consciousness. What we find when we arrive is a disconcerting mixture of the familiar (the hotel room decorated with trappings of western civilization) and the strange (Bowman’s glimpses of himself as he ages, then dies).
Kubrick may not wish to spell things out for us, but he does drop hints. The smashing of a dropped wine glass suggests that our bodies, too, are merely temporary containers of the spirit within. Nearing death, Bowman appears to realize this at last, raising his hand to reach towards the monolith, much as the ape-creatures reached out to it two hours/four million years before in 2001.
Bowman moves on to a higher level of consciousness, and is returned to Earth as a “starchild,” awaiting re-birth as the next stage in humanity’s evolution.
The year 2001 is now history, of course. Right now, it seems more likely to be remembered for the destruction of those other monoliths — the World Trade Center’s twin towers — than for a 40-year-old film. But art is long, as they say, and 100 years from now, as our descendants struggle to recall the origins, nature and purpose of the squalid “war on terror,” questions posed by 2001 may well continue to challenge them much more profoundly.
David Bright has published widely on Canadian social, labour and criminal justice history. He teaches history and politics at Niagara College, Ontario.
