2001 — A Space odyssey

HAL 9000: Stop Dave. Stop Dave. I am afraid. I am afraid Dave.

I can speak in great lengths about its cinematography, it’s music and the Directorial skills of Kubrick but not today, today I will just say why it has kept me awestruck. From the next paragraph onwards it will be full of spoilers so do not read beyond … if you are interested to watch this movie.

The movie has no dialogues in the first 25 minutes and the last 23 minutes , so how does this movie communicate with its audience , it does so with the most beautiful imagery that sends a message that remains with you way after you watched this movie.

So , what should one expect from this movie , I believe you should prepare yourself for a movie viewing experience that is confusing and overwhelming but that is one of the main reasons why this movie is considered Kubrick’s greatest and is among every “100 movies to watch before you die” list available on the internet . So the only thing that I will tell you before watching this movie is “Let it drown you in confusion and awe .”

The very first time I came across a reference to this movie was in a cartoon called Oggy and the cockroaches, where Oggy travels to moon , finds a black monolith , in sheer awe touches it , but it wabbles and falls on him , the episode ends with him dying like Dave ( the protagonist ) of the movie and being reborn as the starchild, but so do the cockroaches and pester him. Even though the episode was a parody of sorts but still that episode just goes to show how impactful that movie is.

The black monoliths play a huge role in this movie , they are not just a piece of marble but they are rather a network of gods or highly evolved beings who communicate in a medium beyond our senses , much like the Gods that were in the black hole in Interstellar who communicated via Gravity.

The Monolith’s appear 4 times in the movie and each appearance happens at a key plot point.

• The first one appears at the beginning of human evolution during the era of apes , the apes touch it and it grants them intelligence , with which they start using bones of the dead animals as weapons .
• The second one appears when the humans have evolved so much so that they are not confined to their planets and have started to venture out in the universe . This monolith seems to give out a strange signal , which I believe was a message to other Monolith’s or beings that the humans have achieved the maximum potential and are mentally ready to receive the next “update” and “bug fixes”.
• The next one appears when Dave turns Hal 9000 off because it had started killing his co — astronauts because they were trying to sabotage the mission . This one appears because it tells the message that humans had tried to play the role of God , tried becoming the creator of life but has realised that the creation was not perfect and was rather catastrophic . They have realised that they themselves are not evolved enough to play the creator.
• The last one appears when Dave travels through Stargate and enters a room where he sees his whole life pass in mere seconds, and when he is on his death bed he sees the Monolith and raises his hand like the Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Adam.

The rooms seems to be like a cage where Dave is kept and observed and on his death bed is recreated into a new higher being , not like the Monolith’s but still a more intelligent being than other humans is sent to earth similar to the way Jesus Christ was sent to earth for liberation of human kind.

This movie ends with a question , but unlike most movies that end on a question this movie does not end on a binary one. Like , the movie Inception ends with the question “ Is it a dream ?” Which has a very simple response “Yes/No”. But 2001 ends with the question what is god , is it some mythological being , is it a highly intelligent being , is it a monolith , there are no wrong answers , whatever be your view of the movie it is right . Just like what’s in the suitcase in the movie Pulp fiction , there are no wrong answers.

The movie is very evocative , the reason being it depends on visual storytelling for the most part, and the visuals do not fail to communicate what the creators wanted to convey. Be it the apes who start using bones as weapons or a pen levitating in anti gravity or just a black marble slab everything leaves a lasting impression . Stanley Kubrick knows how to hold , confuse , and keeping the eyes of the audience glued to screen and this movie is his legacy.

HAL 9000: daisy , Daisy.