..because for decades I’ve been constantly irked by people saying that 2001: A Space Odyssey “is great but it doesn’t really tell you what’s going on…not really.”
It’s a God movie, dingleberries…a “shaggy God story,” as John Simon wrote way back when…Stanley Kubrick even decided to help out the slowboats just before the stargate sequence by having the floating monolith and the Jupiter moons form a crucifix…in so doing Kubrick was essentially saying “do you get it now, geniuses?”
Posted on 9.3.24: The mysterious black monolith that suddenly appears before the tribe of lesser “Dawn of Man” apes (i.e., the ones who lost access to the dirty-water pond because a tribe of tougher, snarlier apes kicked them out)…the monolith is a cosmic blessing, a civilization-saver…a bringer of deliverance, transcendence, possibility.
Now hear this: the alien life forms who sent the monolith are basically conducting a massive scientific experiment by attempting to spawn intelligence on our planet…the monolith is a bringer of intelligent initiative and awareness and technological potential…an explorational sentinel sent by aliens of incalculable intelligence, the purpose being to trigger and awaken the lesser apes to evolutionary advancement and put them on the road to eventually becoming intelligent human beings.
In the 21st Century present, the very same monolith (or a close cousin of the one that fiddled with the apes) has been found buried under the surface of the moon. Once sunlight hits it, a piercing radio signal is generated…a signal aimed at the hugely insubstantial gas planet of Jupiter, easily one of the most disappointing planets in our solar system.
Light hitting the no-longer-buried monolith informs the super-intelligent aliens that humans have advanced to a certain noteworthy point in their evolution.
All the HAL vs. Dave and Frank stuff aboard the Discovery is the only plotty part of the film, and was basically generated by Stanley-the-misanthrope…look at how Bowman and Poole allow HAL to read their lips…idiots!..plus all in all artificial intelligence is just as capable of hubris and ruthlessness and self-destruction as the humans who created it.
The finale is wonderful, of course, and the basic thing that Keir Dullea‘s Dave Bowman seems to know deep down is that the glorious monolith represents damn near everything…it’s the fountain of eternity and the central engine of life…continuity, God, essence, worship, wonder and infinite expansion.