So what's up with the floating fetus, the black
slab, and the rapidly aging astronaut in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Stick around to find out! It would be an understatement to say
that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, totally changed the game when
it was released way back in 1968. The film's expansive narrative and surrealist
imagery launched thousands of film studies dissertations and helped cement Kubrick as one
of the premier filmmakers of the 20th century. The narrative of the movie features several
distinct acts. The first takes place before the dawn of humanity and sees a community
of primates who discover a large, black, rectangular monolith. Although the monolith
appears to be a totally inanimate object, after coming in contact with it, the primates
learn that they can use a large animal bone as a weapon to fend off another group of primates
who have encroached on their territory. In the next section, the film flashes forward
hundreds of thousands of years into the future, beyond our own time. A group of officials on
a human moon base are investigating a series of abnormalities, and discover a similar
monolith buried in a lunar crater nearby. The last section of the film, set
a little over a year in the future, centers on a spaceship on a mission to
Jupiter. It's this section that brings 2001: A Space Odyssey to its famously confusing end. We're introduced to the crew on a mission
to Jupiter, most of whom are in cryosleep, with the exception of Dr. David
Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole. There is one other active crew member
aboard the Discovery One: HAL, a computer that controls the functions of the ship
and communicates with a monotone human male voice. During the mission, Bowman and Poole become
alarmed when they catch HAL seemingly lying to them about a mechanical problem with one of the
antennas on the outside of the vessel. However, with no other recourse, Poole exits
the ship to investigate the issue. He learns the hard way that he was
correct to be suspicious of HAL, who sabotages Poole's equipment, killing
him and leaving him floating in space. Bowman exits the ship to try and save Poole,
but it's too late. Not only has HAL deactivated the life support systems for the crew members
who are still in cryosleep, killing them all, but he also refuses to let Bowman back onto
the ship. This is a shocking and terrifying development for a number of reasons, perhaps
the most cogent of them being that HAL, like the bone used by the primates in the first section
of the movie, is meant to be a tool for humanity. But it appears that HAL has a mission of its own. When Bowman tries to re-board
the ship, HAL coldly informs him, "This mission is too important for
me to allow you to jeopardize it." Bowman manages to make his way back
into the ship and begins to manually shut down HAL. While he does so, the
computer pleads with him to stop, promising to stop sabotaging
Bowman, and repeatedly saying, "I'm afraid, Dave" But Bowman ignores it. When the computer is fully
deactivated, a video suddenly begins to play. In it, a man sitting at a desk declares that the
video was recorded before the mission began, but is so top-secret that only HAL was
made aware of it. It seems that shutting down HAL caused the video to autoplay,
even though it was clearly meant to be played when the crew reached their destination
in Jupiter's orbit and had all been woken up. The man in the video then reveals the
true nature of Discovery One's mission: to investigate the first sign of
intelligent life in outer space. It was a strong radio emission aimed
at Jupiter, coming from the monolith. "The four-million-year-old black
monolith has remained completely inert, its origin and purpose still a total mystery." What does mission control hope to find
when the ship reaches Jupiter and does the existence of this video — a profound
piece of existential knowledge uploaded into HAL's mainframe — have anything to
do with the computer's sudden sentience? Unfortunately for Bowman, he doesn't
have time to piece that puzzle together, as Discovery One is arriving in Jupiter's
orbit, and things are about to get weird. As the Discovery One approaches Jupiter, it
encounters one of the monoliths orbiting the planet, and then Bowman is pulled into a
slipstream of psychedelic colors for an extended sequence. When it ends, he's no longer
on the spaceship and is instead in a classically ornate bedroom suite with futuristic, lighted
floor tiles. He has also aged considerably, a fact that startles him when he walks
into the bathroom and sees himself in the mirror. While in the bathroom, he looks
through a doorway back into the bedroom, where he now sees a man sitting at a table
eating dinner and wearing a black robe. The man turns around and reveals that he
is Bowman. This Bowman gets up from the table and walks to the bathroom to look
around, as though he heard something. When he returns to the table, he knocks
over a glass. When he turns to pick it up, there's now an even older version of Bowman on the
bed in the room, one that is clearly near death. The older Bowman points to the end of his
bed, and the camera cuts to reveal one of the black monoliths floating in front of
him. When the camera cuts back to Bowman, he has transformed into a fetus, suspended
in a glowing caul over the bed. We then see the fetus floating in space and observing
earth with a curious look in its eyes. There are lots of theories and interpretations
of 2001: A Space Odyssey's ending. Ultimately, however, it's clearly a movie that is
meant to be thought about, discussed, and watched from different points of view. That
being said, there are some obvious threads of connection between the seemingly separate elements
of the film that help explain what it's all about. Mankind's harnessing of technology is one of the
clear themes of the movie. The moment the primates start viewing the bone as a tool can be seen
as a direct precursor to the later sections of the movie that depict man in an advanced space
age. Although these advancements are exciting, they also bring with them serious existential
conundrums, such as the beginning of weaponized warfare, the discovery of the alien monolith
on the moon, and the emerging sentience of HAL. "I know I've never completely
freed myself of the suspicion that there are some extremely
odd things about this mission." And perhaps Bowman's rapid aging at the
end of the film is representative of the price humanity pays for these advancements.
He is disturbed each time an older version of himself is revealed until he's transformed
into a fetus and exists with tranquility. This could be read either as his regression
back to a state of blissful ignorance, similar to the primates before
they encountered the monolith, or evolution into some new state of
technological primitivism. After all, the fetus appears to be in some kind of glowing
orb and floats through space, where it is able to gain a simple, yet powerful, existential
perspective: a view of the earth from space. Where does that leave the monolith? Is
it a literal piece of alien technology that is influencing humanity's evolution,
or merely symbolic of the terrifyingly inscrutable path our technological
advancements have put us on? Ultimately, that is one of those questions each
viewer will have to answer for themselves.
