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fifty years after its release and
seventeen after its imagined future
Stanley Kubrick's 2001 a Space Odyssey
remains a masterwork that stunningly
doesn't feel dated at all meanwhile it's
famously enigmatic ending is as
mysterious as ever what's key about this
ending is that it's not like other
confusing movie endings where we're left
to debate whether option A or option B
is the correct answer to what really
happened you know like is the character
dreaming or not right or wrong dead or
alive
really doing these things or just
imagining it all know here Kubrick is
experimenting with a new kind of ending
altogether it's not just ambiguous its
impressionistic mm one's ending is
intended to evoke images sounds memories
suggestions associations all of which
seek to produce a response in us mental
and emotional so its primary purpose is
to open up not resolve to inspire
questions instead of answering them in
multiple interviews Kubrick not only
avoided clarifying the ending but also
spoke about how it wasn't meant to be
clear in a conventional sense
he told eye magazine I think that the
power of the ending is based on the
subconscious emotional reaction of the
audience which has a delayed effect to
be specific about what it's supposed to
mean
spoils people's pleasure and denies them
their own emotional reactions he also
said to Joseph Delmas if the film stirs
the emotions and penetrates the
subconscious of the viewer if it
stimulates however inchoate Lee his
mythological and religious yearnings and
impulses then it has succeeded so
basically if anyone walks away from 2001
with a very simple answer for what just
happened the viewer may not be
experiencing the ending as deeply as
Kubrick wanted us to
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so huh love that said what do we see
literally happen at the end of the movie
from what we gather advanced aliens have
been contacting humankind through
monoliths to help them develop advanced
technology and a better understanding of
the universe
the first monolith inspires prehistoric
Apes to invent the first tool which is a
weapon for killing and this is
essentially the moment when the Apes
become humankind as we know it so
there's the idea that our intelligence
may have been developed through an
outside mysterious force contacting us
then far in the future around the year
2001 the US government finds a monolith
buried under the surface of the moon
this monolith is sending signals to
Jupiter so the u.s. sends a mission to
Jupiter but on board the spaceship the
computer Hal turns on the humans and
kills most of the crew open the pod bay
doors Hal I'm sorry Dave I'm afraid I
can't do that Dave Bowman manages to
disconnect Hal but by the time they
reach Jupiter he's the only man left
alive he passes through a Stargate of
sorts and here's Kubrick's own literal
explanation of what we see after this
quote he has taken into another
dimension of time and space into the
presence of God like entities who have
transcended matter and who are now
creatures of pure energy they provide an
environment for him a human zoo if you
like they study him his life passes
before him he sees himself aged in what
seems just a matter of moments he dies
and he's reborn transfigured enhanced a
super being finally we see a Starchild
heading back toward Earth and we get the
sense that perhaps humankind has entered
a new era of more intelligent existence
so now let's dig into some of the many
interpretations that have been applied
to this evocative final sequence 2001
can be read as a film about God
Kubrick told AI magazine that quote the
god concept is at the heart of 2001 but
not any traditional anthropomorphic
image of God I don't believe in any of
Earth's monotheistic religions but I do
believe that one can construct an
intriguing Sion
definition of God according to Kubrick
these aliens in the film would seem to
us like gods because they are so
advanced in their evolution that we
couldn't possibly understand them
Kubrick has described them as quote
beings of pure energy and spirit he said
their potentialities would be limitless
and their intelligence ungraspable by
humans
these beings would be gods to the
billions of less advanced races in the
universe just as man would appear a god
to an ant they would be incomprehensible
to us except as gods Kubrick's
scientific God aliens who study us and
educate us via the monolith are hardly
the warm fuzzy conception of God that
many of us have been taught to simply
love and obey Kubrick's God figure is
impenetrable we can't really grasp
anything of its nature let alone its
motives as the alien study Bowman he
becomes an old man symbolically
embodying the aging of all humankind the
elderly Bowman accidentally knocks over
a glass of wine and some have
interpreted that in this moment that
glass represents the human body which
will die while the wine represents the
human spirit which can continue to live
on outside of the body this scene is
immediately followed by a dying Bowman
lying in bed he reaches toward the
fourth black monolith we see in the film
and the shot mimics Michelangelo's
painting the Creation of Adam part of
the Sistine Chapel where Adam reaches
out his hand toward God's the visual
comparison makes Bowman the original
human and the monoliths a representation
of God after Bowman's human form dies or
the glass breaks his spirit the wine is
reborn as the enlightened Starchild
what's happened to Bowman in these rooms
near the end seems to be a kind of
enlightenment critics have noted that
the French 18th century neoclassical
decor recalls the age of enlightenment
so Kubrick's version of God these
mysterious aliens pushing mankind to
progress seem to have as their goal
humankind's enlightenment this star
child is even godlike or christ-like
figure itself compared to the humans on
earth this child is presumably being
sent to earth to impart
newfound wisdom to the people and carry
them toward the next step in their
evolution put in those terms that might
remind us a little of Jesus Christ
Kubrick was strongly influenced by
Nietzsche he opens and closes this film
with Ricard Strauss's thus spake
Zarathustra named after Nietzsche's work
of the same name
[Music]
so this text centers on the concept of
the ubermensch or Superman it argues
that the child is the last stage of
evolution before the ubermensch
so it's meaningful that Strauss's music
comes back in just as we see the
Starchild moving toward Earth as
something more evolved than man maybe a
precursor to the Superman we see four
monoliths in the film and Rolling Stones
Bob McClay points out that every
monolith represents a stage in our
evolution
the first learning device turns the Apes
into humans the second on the moon sends
a signal to alert the alien intelligence
that man has now sufficiently evolved to
find the monolith they're so earthbound
humans have become space travelers even
creators of their own sophisticated
machines but before humankind can reach
the next stage of evolution Bulman has
to unplug Hal
so mankind aborts this experiment of
becoming the creator man kills its
monstrous offspring and instead
progresses on to another stage of
evolution following this higher
intelligent / God this is a very
interesting plot point if we think about
it in terms of today's fears of AI
becoming so intelligent one day it'll
take over the world people who also
happens to be rich or powerful I was
told the people here at future
investment initiative are interested in
inviting and future initiatives which
means a which means me back in 1968
Kubrick imagines that turning point when
computers are starting to become smarter
than man but the story says no our
destiny isn't just to stagnate and let
our machines dominate us our destiny is
in a different direction because we
humans aren't finished in our evolution
so the third monolith near Jupiter is a
kind of portal that ushers humanity into
a stage of reflection and examination
communing closely with these mysterious
greater beings and then the fourth
monolith appears near Bowman's deathbed
just before he's reborn as the Starchild
that surpasses our current consciousness
when the film came out Kubrick told the
New York Times
somebody said man is the missing link
between primitive Apes and civilized
human beings we are semi civilized
capable of cooperation and affection but
needing some sort of Transfiguration
into a higher form of life man is really
in a very unstable condition that's such
an interesting thought because we talk a
lot about how we evolved into our
current state and we think about the
future state of our lifestyle or the
planet but we don't always think much
about how we ourselves might continue to
evolve in the future the Starchild's
identity and form is unknown as
mysterious to us as we are now as the
human identity was to the Apes
thus the end of this film with this
image of the Starchild
feels surprisingly incredibly optimistic
the image symbolizes mankind's potential
to spiritually remake ourselves as
something more the final shot also
affirms the theme of eternal recurrence
in the film another Nietzschean concept
the idea that everything repeats over
and over in 2001 moments from the
different stages of evolution mirror
each other to show how little has
changed in some ways over time so then
at the end sending this star child back
to Earth after Bowman left earth for
this long Space Odyssey represents the
ultimate return scholars have also
written about how closely the film echos
the story of Homer's epic The Odyssey of
course Odyssey is right there in the
title and Leonard fweet has noted that
Dave's last name Bowman could elude to
Odysseus's skill as an archer many have
also noticed that the single red eye of
Hal brings to mind the Cyclops the
Odyssey is the story of Odysseus voyage
home to Ithaca Bowman's journey seems to
be an adventure into the new and unknown
but because it ends in his rebirth as
this higher form of consciousness going
back to earth perhaps Kubrick is
implying that this is a homecoming that
it's a journey toward becoming more
ourselves what we were always meant to
be
up until the ending sequence of 2001 the
story isn't the most conventionally told
narrative but it is logical and causal
straightforward enough to follow then
the film's final sequence is confusing
abstract and symbolic so this shift in
the storytelling technique signals the
entering of a dimension that is beyond
Dave's and our comprehension that's why
the last line of dialogue in the film is
origin we can't fathom the intelligence
or purpose of these aliens and thus in
the final sequence we can only process
certain imagery and respond to it in our
personal intuitive way Kubrick himself
said 2001 is a non verbal experience out
of 2 hours and 19 minutes of film there
are only a little less than 40 minutes
of dialogue I tried to create a visual
experience one that bypasses verbalized
pigeonholing
and directly penetrates the subconscious
with an emotional and philosophic
content I intended the film to be an
intensely subjective experience that
reaches the viewer at an inner level of
consciousness just as music does so from
these words we can gather that it's not
so important to get the ending in a
traditional way in Kubrick's view any
interpretation of the ending is
supplemental to the experience of it so
if 2001 a Space Odyssey has confused you
but also emotionally or mentally
affected you then it's done its job
before we go there's also a lot to say
about how the ending reflects on a major
theme of the film technology and it's
linked to violence and how the monolith
fits into all that but we kind of need a
whole other video to do that theme
justice so stay tuned
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