2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

 Stanley Kubrick's "A Space Odyssey"

Writing about a work as full of depth as Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" is just as daunting as watching the film itself. Not only is it one of the most iconic films ever made, its vastness of ideas has made it one of the most analyzes and discussed films ever. Its images and concepts opened the doors to filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and spring boarded the new era of Hollywood to create massive, technologically advanced filmmaking. It is hands-down one of the most influential and sought after works in film history.

Despite its depth, the plot is somewhat simple. The opening acts finds early man as apes. With the arrival of a strange, black monolith, the apes reach a new level of consciousness and begin using tools. Specifically, the apes use the bones of dead animals as weapons to attack neighboring apes to gain access to their water supply.

The second act finds humanity in a fictionalized 2001 - where we are now space travelers. Dr. Heywood Floyd, a chairman of the United States National Council of Astronautics, travels to a lunar outpost to investigate a newly discovered artifact - another monolith. While observing it, it emits a high-pitched radio signal.

Eighteen months later, the American spacecraft Discovery One is carrying a sleeping group of scientists, along with two space pilots, to Jupiter. Joining the crew is HAL 9000, an AI computer tasked with technological operations of the craft. The purpose of the mission has been shielded from those awake, but it is presumably to continue searching for an additional monolith. After HAL discloses an error with their antenna, the crew find no fault. After discussing their concerns over HAL's functionality, HAL intentionally kills one of the pilots and the sleeping scientists. The other pilot, Dave, disconnects HAL and continues the mission solo.

In the final chapter, Dave arrives at Jupiter, where he sees the floating monolith. In following it, Dave (in his spacecraft) is pulled into a colorful vortex of strange landscapes and psychedelic colors. He arrives in a stark white neoclassical bedroom where slowly becomes more and more aged versions of himself. While sitting on his deathbed as now an old man, the monolith re-appears. Dave is now a baby floating through space, returning to Earth.

During the making of "Dr. Strangelove," Kubrick knew he wanted his next film to be about alien life and humanity's interactions with it. He enlisted the help of science-fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke, to collaborate with the script. Clarke wrote a novelized version simultaneously as Kubrick was writing the script, assisting with the science fiction elements.

The script and story of "2001: A Space Odyssey" seems to pull directly from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Specifically, humanity quest for divine meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. Even the title of the iconic song used for the opening and closing moments of the film, "Also Spake Zarathustra" is directly pulled from Nietzsche's 1883 work of the same name. The closing moments of Dave returning to Earth as a baby embodies Nietzsche's notions of destroying your values and becoming a child (or lamb) again, wherein you re-create yourself with new values separated from the existing value structure you came into the world with.

To me, the entire film rests on their concepts. Throughout the film, humanity (even unknowingly) continue to search for meaning and purpose. The sense of purpose is instilled into us through the symbolic monolith, the Promethean figure that imbues humanity with evolutionary concepts. Our quests to uncover the monoliths signifies our yearning for truth or meaning. 

Even the HAL 9000 computer, which also mirrors the Promethean concept, seems to malfunction because of these quests for meaning. After HAL is introduced, one of the first things he notes to Dave is how mysterious their mission is, and seems to complain about the lack of knowing the purpose of it. This sends HAL into an existential crisis (akin to Frankenstein's monster). HAL begins to experience what only could be perceived as 'emotion' derived from the frustrations over this lack of purpose. Of course, other scholars will continue to argue over HAL's malfunction, attributing it to differing rationales. 

However, this quest to uncover the purpose of life is seemingly answered by Kubrick both in the final images and in the symbolic images throughout. He continues to use sexual imagery throughout the film, just as he did with "Dr. Strangelove." However, the reasoning behind them are different in both films. 

In "2001," Kubrick uses phallic representations of spacecrafts and vaginal-looking doorways and ports to visually signify the underlying purpose under this unwavering quest for meaning. All in all, life's efforts to persist are simply that - an effort to persist. The purpose of life is to live. In other words, we must continue to be 'born' - to not only propagate life by reproducing it, but to birth ourselves into more enlightened beings. The final image of the baby cements this notion. As Nietzsche states, we must return to being children once again - to a state of renewal. 

Beyond the film's dense allegorical and metaphorical meanings, the visual nature of the film is revolutionary in filmmaking. Specifically, the execution of space travel. The effects were so unseen of at the time that many people still attribute Kubrick to the conspiracy of the fake moon landing. Shots of spacecraft travelling through space even look strikingly similar to the blockbuster "Star Wars," which would release a decade later. Even the climactic moment of the film, the travels through the infinite void, are still some of the most shocking and avant-garde images you'll see in film. 

"2001: A Space Odyssey" is a monumental work. No questions about it. Scholars still look to this film as a source of unyielding influence on modern cinema. Its impact is unquestioned. More importantly, the thematic confines of the film reckon with the late 1960s hope of humanity's continued growth. Beyond the 1960s, the film manages to reach universal conclusions about the nature of existence and humanity's place in the infinite universe.