2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Spoilers. Four million years ago, stagnating proto-humans were close to extinction until a rectangular, black monolith appeared, altering them, making them smarter and more violent, and allowing their descendants to become the dominate species on the planet. But those descendants have now become stagnant as well. In early 2001 (though earlier in the sequels), another monolith is found buried on the Moon, and when it is hit by sunlight, sends a signal to Jupiter. Eighteen months later, the spaceship Discovery heads toward Jupiter, with three awake crew members, Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea), Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), and the computer HAL (voice: Douglas Rain), and five in cryogenic sleep. During the trip, something goes wrong with HAL, which causes Bowman and Poole to immediately plan to disconnect him. HAL responds by attempting to kill them, but Bowman survives and shuts down HAL. He then proceeds to Jupiter, where another monolith awaits. He is taken out of normal space, and ends up in what appears to be an overly ornate hotel room. In that room, he leaps from moment to moment has he ages, until he is transformed into a more powerful being, known externally to the film, as the Star Child, and looks down upon the Earth, which is now his to do with as he will.

2001 is not a straightforward film. One could fault director Stanley Kubrick for failing to communicate his message and leaving so many people confused, but I don’t. The film’s target audience is not everyone. It’s complicated and multilayered, yet I never felt confused. I’d read the novel (written during production by Arthur C. Clarke from whatever Kubrick wanted to show him) before I watched the movie, as well as the short story, The Sentinel, that inspired it, and also Clarke’s Childhood’s End, which has overlapping ideas. Not, mind you, that the novel is equivalent to the film. The book is one layer of the film—the simplest—and even then it’s an inexact match. The novel is literal, answering all questions and focusing on scientific advancement, but Kubrick wanted to avoid clear answers and was antipathetic toward a discussion of technology. He was telling a visual story (it’s nearly a silent movie), where the explanation in some cases is the experience, while Clarke liked clear, intellectually understandable explanations. Kubrick had a lot more in mind than he told Clarke, but the book does provide an easy access into the film for anyone who isn’t ready to wade into emotionless humans and psychedelic fractals without a crutch. And that appears to have been Kubrick’s plan. It was a useful crutch for me.

Kubrick’s stated that the surface interpretation, the one Clarke supplied, is but one way to look at the movie, the “simplest level,” and that he would not explain the deeper layers he had created. Oddly, it’s for that simplest level that 2001 has gained its more ardent fans. It gets odder when people claim that 2001 is an exciting film filled with epic moments and a hopeful message. It’s not any of that.

2001 is boring. I’ve had people get quite indignant when I say that, and exclaim that I “just don’t get it.” But it’s these folks who’ve missed the boat. It not only is boring, it is supposed to be boring. Kubrick worked to bring the audience into the experience of his films. While he did this with most of his movies, I’ll point to the other two most obvious examples: In A Clockwork Orange the viewer was meant to feel violent; in Eyes Wide Shut the viewer was meant to feel frustration. He didn’t want you to simply observe. You were a participant. And for 2001, participation means being bored. Modern man, duplicating his ancestor, had become stagnant, and once again needed the monolith to “progress.” This stagnation is shown in scene after scene. Events that should be exciting, such as a trip to the Moon, are shown as uninteresting commutes, filled with trivialities. Characters display little sign of emotion or even life. Floyd doesn’t appear to care about the most important discovery in human history. Finding an artifact made by unknown entities is just a business trip to him. Bowman almost never changes his expression and speaks in a monotone. Poole occasionally shows signs of life, but at other times, such as while on the sun table and later sitting before a screen, he appears as a robot who’s been switched off. Scenes go on long past the point of supplying any new information, and the few times major things happen (the pod hitting Poole, Bowman moving out of the airlock) we don’t see them. Kubrick wanted us to feel that drabness, that lack of energy, so that we could be jolted by the birth of the Star Child.

This brings up a question that has clung to me for thirty years: Can a boring movie be good? I find it difficult to pick a specific thing that damns a film, but invoking boredom seems to be the best candidate. Saying a film is boring is usually enough to reject it. Does it make a difference if the boredom was intentional? Well, it means the film is a success at what it is meant to be, but success isn’t equivalent to good. I don’t care if someone meant to leave the milk out in the heat for a several days or did it by accident; I’m not drinking it in either case. But I’m going to avoid making a definite statement on the philosophy of art here. It’s just another thing to consider.

And one more comment on the simple layer of the film: Why does anyone find the Star Child comforting? That final image is disquieting, not what someone would use in the cinematic language to express hope or goodness. Kubrick knew Clarke’s feelings—that he’d expressed with Childhood’s End—that as a human, he liked us the way we were and was not keen on an evolutionary jump into something unrecognizable. And this is more than unrecognizable; the Star Child is monstrous. Nothing in the film implies it will do anything nice for the residents of Earth. Destroy them? Play with them as a child plays with ants? Sure. But not help. Besides the frightful appearance, the Star Child’s existence is a parallel to those of the tribe of proto-humans, and that didn’t work out well for any other tribe. This time, there is no tribe, just one, gruesome god.

A majority of the fans go no further than this interpretation of the film, no matter that Kubrick said it was only one way to look at it. And yet, they delve into it, examining mysteries and looking for depth in what is a very straightforward tale. What happens in the final act? Well, god-like beings who are beyond our comprehension take Dave to a place beyond our comprehension and turn him into something beyond our comprehension. There’s nothing more than that, besides how it makes you feel, because it’s beyond your comprehension. If all you’re seeing in the film is man, evolution, and aliens, (plus one psychotic computer), you’re done.

So that’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a meticulously made, and boring film. But now things get complicated, because this is a meticulously made film, which is filled with “mistakes,” and for the story it is telling, a lot of things don’t make sense. HAL doesn’t make sense in a storytelling way. Why is he even in it, much less why does he go insane? Clarke gives an answer to the later question, mostly in his book 2010: Odyssey Two, but it’s an uninteresting answer (HAL couldn’t deal with having to lie), and irrelevant to this film as Kubrick specifically took that answer out of the film. Certainly part of the reason for HAL’s subplot to exist is for there to be something going on while we’re given time to become properly bored. But that’s a fractional answer at best. For another fraction, HAL can be used as a comparison to the humans, to show how computer-like we have become and thus support the stagnation theme. And then HAL it is another parallel, of man uplifting machine as monolith uplifts man, only men aren’t very good at it. Yet none of that is enough, not for the time spent on it.

And then there’s a perfectionist filmmaker making so many technical errors. The lightning in much of the film is incorrect. The Moon, planets, and satellites are repeatedly lit from the wrong direction. And often the light doesn’t shift as the objects move. Shadows aren’t where they should be. In one scene there would have to be a second Sun to explain how the Earth is lit from one direction while astronauts on the surface of the Moon are lit from another. Then there are numerous times when things swap sides, such as the positions of the cryo-pods on the ship. And the Earth doesn’t even rotate. That’s a hell of a lot of mistakes for a guy known for not making mistakes. Too many. And just in case you didn’t have faith in him, instead thinking this is like many films where they just didn’t get it right, Kubrick breaks into the film to point out that all those glitches are on purpose, when an announcement is made about a missing sweater before the scene where there’s a “continuity error” and that sweater vanishes. In other words, the movie knows it’s a movie, and announces that. Things aren’t right because this isn’t reality, but is a movie, and maybe, just maybe, that’s what Bowman discovers, instead of aliens—or since there’s no single answer, maybe that’s what he discovers in addition to aliens. This gives an understandable explanation of what is going on in the space-hotel, to go with the one that’s beyond comprehension; Bowman is watching the movie of himself.

Dwelling on that during those long moments meant to bore you the first time through makes it less boring on later viewings.

And things are more complicated still since Kubrick implied there were multiple layers, not just two. I find it useful to examine what was going on during the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There’s an interesting 1966 documentary called A Look Behind the Future (it’s available on YouTube), which apparently had one television showing outside the US, but was intended for commercial and industrial use, that is, to get companies to invest in 2001 or to advertise it. It suggests that 2001 will be a movie primarily focused on new technology, and how exciting that tech is. It straight-up states that it will be a propaganda film, the purpose of which is to “indoctrinate” the ignorant masses to the future the government and industry are planning—to “educate through entertainment.” It also makes numerous mentions of Wernher von Braun, and no one seems to have questioned that the man who just made Dr. Strangelove might not be the best person for this job. Hell, forget that. This is the man who made his feelings very clear after Spartacus: The only messages that will be in a Stanley Kubrick film are Stanley Kubrick’s messages. He was no one’s propagandist but his own. Yet Kubrick went along with it all, nodding and smiling, right up until he stabbed them all in the back, and then twisted the knife for fun. NASA and IBM and others tossed money and experts at Kubrick, and he used them all, just not as they’d intended. He took the cash, and their designs, and then he ripped out all the info dumps on how the rockets work and how the Moonbase was made and how cool it will be when we all have briefcase phones. He jettisoned any suggestion that human error was at fault for HAL and pointed the blame back at IBM (well, there’s a reason for the subplot…). He took an interview with two of the scientific advisers where they seemed to lack humanity, and used it as a basis for an interview in the film. However, he kept in the voice-over narration (didn’t know 2001 had a voice over? It’s terrible) for a screening for the investors, and then he pulled it out. In my most recent viewing, I kept seeing Kubrick’s middle finger toward those who wanted to use him to indoctrinate the masses, while he yells to those masses, “Think for your damn selves.” So in that there’s an additional reason beyond letting it stand on its own for why Kubrick refused to explain his movie.

Is 2001: A Space Odyssey a great film? I don’t know. I do know it’s a fascinating one. There isn’t one right answer to what it all means. Rather, Kubrick tossed in all kinds of ideas and all sorts of messages and he didn’t care if they intellectually fit together as the thread that bound them wasn’t thought, but feeling. 2001 is first and foremost, about how the visuals make you feel. But secondarily there’s all the rest: boredom and stagnation, and aliens, and the utter destruction of humanity, and a critique of capitalism, and anti-propaganda statements, and the search for God, and self-aware cinema, and man’s semi-civilized violent nature, and movie screens within a movie screen, and Homer’s poem, and a concern that people are rejecting art for commerce. Yeah, there’s a lot going on. And if you don’t look for a single answer, but take them all, then 2001 makes sense.