INTERCHANGE
Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect.
Interchange
Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect.
Interchange
This page is based on ideas that people have sent in and asked me about. It allows me to go beyond the thoughts that appear in my discourse pages, and explore new aspects of 2001. And then some! Some of your questions and observations are just too darn good to stay private, and you will find a lot of fascinating unexplored ideas hidden away here.
This is not a page of "answers" about 2001, any more than the rest of the site. The source of endless fascination for me lies in possibilities, not solutions. While there are people to wonder about the film with open minds, there will always be possibilities and never conclusions. Is not this why 2001 is ageless, and will continue to be so?
I might say that I do not bother verifying information that other people give me (not enough time!). I am happy to take their word for it. If there are factual errors I would be interested to know about them. I also take liberties with the original wording, for editorial purposes, without trying to change the meaning. The original interchanges, initiated by Jay Sitter and Bill Manion, use bold italics for their starting points, plain text my meanderings. Later interchanges identify the people concerned.
Exchange initiated by Scott Lloyd
(S) The original title for 2001: a Space Odyssey was Journey Beyond the Stars.
(U) Yes. I'm not aware of any other film that was the subject of such long pre-release publicity, with ads appearing in mainstream journals and press releases three years before the first screening.
(S) In the Cinerama version of 2001, there is a scene of Bowman retrieving an AE35 unit from one of those areas. I don't see this scene in the traditional 35 mm release. Evidently, the "bits" were food and equipment storage, as well as spacers between the crew bays and the radioactive thermonuclear engines.
(U) Originally, the scenes of Frank preparing for EVA were near-duplicates of the ones of Dave - some of the bits that were cut. I have never seen the uncut version - nor has anyone else since the cuts were made, as far as I know. Recently on the radio here the announcer was interviewing a man who is working on an unauthorised biography of Kubrick, due for release next year, and happened to mention that he had attended the original New York screening of 2001 in its full pre- cut form. He also commented that it was the most boring film he ever saw, which spoilt the effect somewhat for me!
When I wrote my discourse, I had never read any other book about 2001. One guy was so amazed he actually sent me a copy of Bizony's book, "Filming the Future", and of course that has a lot of information that explains some of the things I refer to, including the design of Discovery. I made the decision, though, to leave my page as written, even though I now know more.
How authentic are those "Dawn of Man" scenes? Man shares anthropological origins with orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas. The common ancestor is Kenyapithecus. Is this what we are seeing?
I never thought Kubrick was giving us a real species, just a generic representation of the origins of humankind. The limb proportions and movements made it impossible to mistake his ape- people for anything other than what they were - men in monkey suits. I like to think that, had Kubrick really wanted to show authentic simian characteristics, he would have found a way of doing so.
I also took the setting to be generic. We see tapirs, natives of central and south America and parts of Asia, coexisting with leopards, natives of Africa and parts of Asia, and zebra, natives of Africa! Perhaps, four million years ago, their habitats coincided, but it seems to be a right zoological hodge- podge. Take your pick! But it again suggests to me that the Dawn of Man scenes were never intended to be scientifically sound, more a case of Kubrick the artist giving us a scenario that combined disparate elements which he felt would make his message effective.
If you think about it, to do the scene any other way would have been extremely difficult (at least, even more difficult!). If you want to communicate a message as effectively as possible, why not mix up all the best elements regardless of their source, instead of restricting yourself to whatever happens to occur in nature in one little place?
Exchange initiated by Jason
(J) I think that even considering the idea of aliens in retrospect to the monoliths is a silly concept (I wonder what Arthur C. Clarke would say about this...). The idea of the monolith (at least in my vision) is essentially a catalyst for evolution. I doubt that anyone would dispute this. The idea that another race would be so interested in human civilization is ludicrous. If we were to say that aliens were behind the monolith, this implies two possibilities:
1) Humanity is a large-scale experiment, i.e., we were put here to be monitored by another civilization, possibly as a way of learning about themselves.
2) Humans are terribly stupid. This race of creatures far superior than ourselves decided that since we obviously never would have advanced without their assistance, we needed a monolith to help us along.
(U) Well, I wouldn't presume to speak for the great man, but it seems clear from the original "The Sentinel" that aliens is exactly what he had in mind. He had a crystal pyramid rather than a monolith, but its "builders were not concerned with races still struggling up from savagery... Perhaps they wish to help our infant civilisation. But they must be very, very old... the emissaries are coming."
It's interesting, though, that I'd never really thought about the monolith in any other way, until someone else also made the point: what if the monoliths were just part of the structure of the universe, and were nothing to do with any alien force? Not quite the same as your suggestion: "The idea of the monolith (at least in my vision) is essentially a catalyst for evolution", but along similar lines of questioning whether it's anything to do with aliens.
(J) My interpretation is that the monolith is the tool of a divine being. Because the simple fact of the matter is, is what possible motive could a race of aliens have for expanding Jupiter into a second sun? The only reason I could imagine is that they needed the second sun to make unihabitable planets such as Pluto more succeptable to sustain life. But even that doesn't hold.
(U) OK, but if human beings are too insignificant for aliens then wouldn't that go even more so for a divine being? (Just being provocative here! That's the great thing about 2001, everyone has an equal entitlement to express their interpretation!). I raise the question of how many monoliths there are, or may be. Could be they are scattered all over the universe, and who knows what their purpose is? Human beings evolved because of a monolith, but is that the reason why it was there? Its true purpose may be as far outside our ability to understand as any divine being.
(J) The bottom line is that in the universe of 2001, aliens do not necesarily exist.
(U) I agree, but in the REAL universe too. As I have indicated, I don't assume that because we can make mathematical projections about the likelihood of other inhabited worlds we can necessarily say that they must exist. We may be all alone! Which, for as long as I can remember, has been a more frightening thought in its way than any tale of alien invasion.
Aliens uplifted: another view, from Andrew Newstead
Andrew took Jason's thoughts on aliens and came up with some thoughts inspired, not (for a change) by 2001 or Arthur C. Clarke, but by science- fiction author David Brin and the books he has written to create his "Uplift" series. I have not previously gone outside the boundaries of the books related to 2001 and Solaris, but in view of some of the discussion that is on display in these Web pages about aliens, monolith builders and the nature of sentience I think the following piece is interesting.
Here is what Andrew has to say.
In this series of books we (humanity) have not gone to the stars, the stars have come to us, and hellishly complicated they are too!
Sentient life forms do not evolve in this Universe, they are "Uplifted" from promising animal species around the galaxy. This has been happening right through history... (Billions of years) back a mythical "Precursor" race, which has since disappeared from the scene, developed a complicated social structure, with a system of Patron and Client races. A Patron race uplifts a Client to sentience. This Client race then serves a period of indenture to the Patron race (several thousand years or so) until it is judged mature. It can then go on to become a Patron itself.
Now, Galactic civilisation discovers humanity. Apparently, we have come up the hard way by ourselves. This is totally unheard of. Some of the Galactics think that humanity is an abandoned Client species (the extreme orthodox view), which is a heinous crime. Others are fascinated by an unparalleled discovery, and some of them are petrified of us and what we may represent to the Galactic order. The majority feeling among the Galactics is to have humanity "adopted" by an established Patron and taught how to behave!
However, to complicate the plot further, before contact humanity had itself started to experiment with uplift, and had successfully uplifted chimpanzees to sentience, following on with uplifting dolphins. By the Galactics own most sacred laws this makes humanity a Patron race and so cannot be adopted. Humans haven't been slow to figure this out for themselves!
There is an interesting sub-plot involving knowledge. The Galactic civilization has been in existence for billions of years, collecting knowledge to the point where further research into any subject is no longer considered necessary. All knowledge resides in the Great Encyclopaedia and is accessible to all races. Humans, however, don't quite trust this and, armed with a few thousand years of experimental tradition, insist on researching the universe. To the annoyance of some races, we have been finding out things that are not in the Encyclopaedia...
What were those opening scenes all about?
The film is based on the scenario that an alien force visited the Earth and gave the human species a leg- up in the evolutionary cycle. There is no indication as to what form this alien force took. All we have is the monolith, which has no features, no colour, no characteristics. Every viewer had to make up their own mind what to make of it. No plastic monsters or green slime. The monolith was there - and then it was gone again. What it gave the primitive humanoids was the ability to grow strong by being able to kill their own food, and to perpetuate their own tribe by conquering anyone else who came between them and what they needed to thrive - in the case we saw, a water supply.
In my Discourse - Legacy page, I pick out the fact that the monolith implanted violence as a characteristic that allowed human beings to rise above all other forms of life on Earth.
Why did the aliens choose Moonwatcher's tribe as the subjects of the monolith? Did they detect higher intellectual powers in that particular clan? If so, were they using mental capacity as their criteria for selecting test subjects for the monolith experiment?
You raise the idea that the alien had some way of measuring the mental potential of the different species it found on Earth before dropping the monolith off, and picked on Moonwatcher's particular tribe for some unstated reason. Fine, may have been so, but there is no evidence.
One thing nobody has considered, though. What if the monolith was actually put there for the leopard's benefit, and it was just by accident that the ape- people got to it first? If the aliens relied on visual observation for deciding which species to select, would they not have found the ape people rather dull and unremarkable? Quite possibly, there was no selection at all, the monolith was simply left to do its work on whatever species first approached it. Or what if there was something about the monolith that repelled the 'wrong ' forms of life, like a big mothball?
I recall from the book that the monolith gave some kind of light show, instead of doing nothing, no doubt Kubrick 's starting point for his own light show. In fact, the light patterns in the monolith in 2010 are actually closer to the book, 2001, than the blankness we saw in the film.
I do, though, like the idea that the alien was imposing some kind of test on life on Earth, mainly because it is such a good link to what I suggest is Hal's purpose in testing Dave and Frank. The most far- reaching parallel of all, and I missed it!
When we take an action, we do not know what the results will be. We can make educated guesses based on probability, but an infinite number of possibilities can arise from any action. We must be careful not to assume that an effect is itself a cause. Two facts: Moonwatcher killed other ape people; ape- people evolved into humans. In 2001, as I have written about it, we take it that the act of killing led to the evolution of a 'superior' variation - homo- sapiens. But there is no basis for fact in that assumption. There is nothing, other than our predisposition to see everything as cause and effect, to indicate that there was any relationship at all between killing and evolution.
It is a bit like my point about how Dave and Frank reacted to the AE-35 incident. They, too, unwittingly fell into the trap of following cause and effect too rigidly. Hal tells them something untrue, therefore he is malfunctioning. I go on to mention hypothesising. Any scientist or statistician knows that a definitive conclusion cannot be drawn from what appears to be a simple link between two events, without first establishing and methodically examining every other possible factor. That is an extremely demanding task, often requiring much use of highly complex mathematics, which is why so much 'popular' science is really worthless, and why true scientific landmarks are very rare - even at today's rate of development, perhaps a few cases in a century. The rest are trivial, or embellishments on what is already there.
It's hard to understand all these references to Moonwatcher.
Moonwatcher is simply the name that people have used for the ape- man who first picks up that bone. The name comes from the flashback that we see at this point - looking up at the monolith from Moonwatcher's viewpoint, with the moon "coincidentally"(?) aligned with it.
We see that ape- people touch the monolith, and subsequently evolve into homo sapiens. Does this mean that the other primates evolved from ape- people who did not physically touch the monolith?
If the apes that physically touched the monolith then evolved differently from the ones that did not, there must have been a transfer of some kind of genetic instructions in the act of touching. I had never thought of that. Anything is possible, but you would expect that some test on the monolith taken from Tycho to the Earth would have detected this. Instead, the monolith was found to be completely inert (though that information is from 2010, not 2001, so for this discussion it is valid to ignore it).
Another possibility is that the Moonwatcher monolith had this function, but not the Tycho one. If it did, would the spacesuit gloves of the men who later touched it act as a barrier to this transfer? If they did not, could we have seen Floyd go the way of David McCallum in the early Outer Limits episode, The Sixth Finger? In 2061: Odyssey 3, Floyd has found the nearest thing yet to eternal youth. Clarke explains how this has come about, but an alternative would have been to use that touch on the monolith as the origin for Floyd's longevity. Perhaps Floyd could have become the progenitor for a monolith- initiated superrace! Though, hopefully, it would not have been necessary to develop a corresponding instinct for ultraviolence.
More questions. Was the radio transmission accompanied by a switching- off of all active functions, so that the Tycho monolith became inert only after fulfilling its purpose? Do we take it that Moonwatcher's monolith is the only one on the entire planet? What if the scenes we see were repeated in many locations? Did evolution spread from one spot, or did it simultaneously occur around the world?
Before the monolith appears, it appears that the ape- people already eat dead animals (as evidenced by the skeletal remains strewn about their cave area). Maybe the major advance that the monolith provided was the ability to reason that killing animals would provide them with meat immediately, instead of scavenging off the remains left by leopards and other carnivores. This would also be more hygienic, and thus evolutionarily sound.
Did the monolith transform the ape- people's mental capacity, or ability to use it, in one sweeping moment, or did it just sow the seed? I am not sure that the ape- people, at any stage, were able to reason in the sense that we think of it. Killing animals instead of waiting for them to fall down dead in the right place provided on- demand gratification of the need for food, but I see this as an instinct rather than a subject of reason. If fresh meat tastes better than something off a putrid corpse, then go for it!
Thinking of cause and effect again, health and hygiene came about as a result of what the ape people found was the best way of satisfying their needs, it was not something that required reason. But from an evolutionary point of view it was certainly a big help to the process! Which is tautological, in a sense. Evolution works because, in the long term, the best options end up in front, but for every best option there is a near- infinite number of other options that disappear.
For a long period in Earth's history, dinosaurs were the best solution to the problem of life. When conditions changed, for reasons that we can only guess at, dinosaurs were no longer appropriate. An intelligent dinosaur could have done all the reasoning it liked about the future, but it would still now have been extinct for millions of years. Reason is no guarantee of immortality! We know of life- forms that exist very successfully in conditions and environments that would kill humans straight away, so our ideas about "hygiene" and "disease" only make sense in terms of our own particular path of evolution.
Without wishing to sink into the fundamentalism morass, evolution still leaves us with a lot of mysteries. At this point in history, it provides the most satisfactory explanation, but it glosses over many issues which cannot be ignored. If all life has a single point of origin, why did birds evolve wings? What use would half- wings have been? What "reason" would there have been to persist over millions of years in growing appendages that had no purpose, merely in the hopes that one day they might be used for flying? If I start flapping my arms up and down now, does it follow that in a few million years humans will be able to fly?
I see evolution as a best- guess for now, but other theories that may have been equally well respected in the past now seem nonsensical in the light of later knowledge - phlogiston, alchemy, blood circulation before William Harvey.
It is not clear what is happening on the moon.
Why is Heywood Floyd journeying to the moon in a spaceship with no passengers except himself? Gradually, Kubrick reveals the reason. Scientists working at a moon base have detected a magnetic field coming from somewhere under the surface of the crater Tycho. They excavate, and find a monolith, identical to the one that Moonwatcher saw! But, of course, nobody has any way of knowing about the first one on Earth.
For the first time, there is unmistakable evidence that man is not the only intelligence in the universe. Tycho, a few hundred kilometres north of Clavius (the location of the moonbase) near the southern edge of the moon, is considered to be the youngest of the main lunar features. Though, at 85km in diameter, by no means the largest crater, Tycho is striking with a prominent central peak and rays extending as much as 1500km in all directions. Walls up to 4500m high give the crater a sharp definition for moon- gazers.
Dating the lunar monolith, given the name Tycho Magnetic Anomaly - One (T.M.A.-1), reveals its age at four million years! Heywood Floyd, as Chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, has been summoned to oversee the management of this incredible find. The need for absolute secrecy means he must travel alone, though heaven knows what the flight crews must have thought, and a story fabricated to explain the secrecy at the base and keep people away - an unknown epidemic, which causes Floyd himself embarrassment when quizzed about it in the Hilton lounge.
(Leonard Rossiter, as Smyslov, is Floyd's inquisitor, giving us a rare glimpse of his talent as a "straight" actor. In the UK, he was very well known for his comedic character parts, and he probably gained his greatest fame as the lead in "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", one of the seventies TV highlights. He died not long afterwards, young and at the height of his career.)
Just as Floyd and his companions group around the monolith for a photograph, the impossible happens. For the only time in four million years, the monolith comes to life. It transmits a powerful radio emission, which we - and Floyd - hear as a piercing screech. And, without warning or explanation, Kubrick shifts us 18 months into the future, to join a manned mission to Jupiter.
Why did the monolith emit that shrill noise when the astronauts were going to have their pictures taken with it? Was this the transmission directed towards Jupiter? Why was it audible to humans? Did it kill them? Why did the scene cut off so abruptly, before these questions were answered?
It seems rather coincidental, that the monolith cries out at the very moment Floyd and the others are having their picture taken grouped in front of it. Coincidence, though, is a perfectly respectable explanation on an astronomical scale for many things that seem to occur too conveniently for comfort at a personal level. Although the monolith had been uncovered for several days, geologically this is insignificant and, in effect, the emission occurred as soon as the monolith was aware of activity around it.
I have taken "activity" as the signal that roused the Tycho monolith. There are other possibilities, such as a reaction to direct sunlight or a change in atmospheric or environmental conditions, but the trouble with any of them is that they could occur for reasons other than human contact - meteor collision, seismic activity. I think it is safe to assume that the monolith existed primarily, if not solely, to monitor the evolution of human beings, so their proximity, so far from Earth, was the monolith's trigger.
In my Discourse - Hal! Page, I point out that Hal has a different definition of the concept of 'instantaneous' from Dave, and go on to show the significance of this in my reading of the "just a moment..." dialogue. The monolith is many times removed from the concept again. A thousand years might still be a lightning reaction for the monolith! Cinematically, it was nice that it happened just at the right time. I do not think that there is a case to be made for suggesting that the monolith was programmed four million years previously with a 'wait for Heywood Floyd' trigger.
Heywood Floyd it is, though, who announces after Hal's disconnection that the radio transmission was aimed at Jupiter. Is it another coincidence, that this message is broadcast just as Dave completes his task? The first time I saw the film, I thought the broadcast was somehow triggered by Hal's disconnection - a response to something that obviously marked an abnormal situation. It is a much cleverer way of bringing us up to date with events than Floyd's letters home, which I refer to in my 2010 review.
The Tycho transmission is audible to humans, but only at the upper range of frequency, and there may have been much higher up the scale that was inaudible. What we do hear is not language in any recognisable form, which implies the transmission was never meant to be understood by people. There is no evidence in 2001 that the transmission was harmful, only uncomfortable, though in 2010 there are two cases of similar transmissions that have destructive capabilities, one hitting the remote probe that gets too close to the anomaly on the Jupiter moon's surface, the other taking out the Russian in his spacepod. The 2010 transmissions are more than a little reminiscent of what occurs in the 1979 movie- from- a- tv- series, "The Quatermass Experiment".
Heywood Floyd obviously survived the Tycho incident, so there is no reason to think any of the others in the group would have suffered any ill effects, other than perhaps a hearing problem later in life. The scene cut off at this point because it was dramatically appropriate to do so! Kubrick had nothing more to tell us about lunar space, so took us straight to Discovery on its journey to Jupiter. Kubrick has no interest in giving us answers, only visions.
In the scene where HAL "pretends" to be concerned about the purpose of the mission, Dave catches on and asks HAL if all he is really trying to do is conduct the crew psychology test. To do this, Hal must have been instructed to try and "convince" the men that he is concerned about the mission's secrecy, so that they will express their true feelings. Dave, however, is not fooled by HAL, thereby exerting his intellectual advancement. It is at this point that HAL points out the non- existent error in the AE-35. What do you suppose this is intended to suggest?
In my Discourse - Hal! page, my point about Dave and the AE-35 incident is that he did not realise that Hal was making a pretence. Dave had been in an incident- free environment for some time, and had no reason to think that anything was out of the ordinary. I am only able to point to it as a plan rehearsed by Hal because I know that nothing is found to be wrong with the AE-35 unit. At the time Hal announces the fault, though, Dave does not know this. Why would he not take Hal's word for it? If Dave had not been fooled by Hal, he would hardly have gone to all the trouble of making that EVA. I think I have explained the AE-35 unit incident in enough detail to at least give one reason why Hal acts in this way.
Hal tried just about everything in his power to convince Dave not to disconnect him. 2001 is following a tradition set by countless murder movies.
Hal trying to stay 'alive' is one of the keys in my own discourse. The way Hal did it was just about the only way available to him, given that he had no way of physically intercepting Dave. A bit more in the way of understanding human psychology, and who knows what the outcome might have been?
Moonwalker kills a fellow creature. Dave disconnects Hal. Both cases show the use of mental superiority in outliving an enemy through the act of killing.
Is Dave Hal's mental superior? Was Moonwalker mentally superior to the ape- people he killed? Both questionable, I think. Hal and Dave are different forms of intelligence, so by what criteria can you declare one "above" the other? In terms of "fitness for purpose", I doubt whether Hal had any equal. This is another issue I write about in my pages.
And is mental superiority a justification for killing, for self- continuation? It can be argued that mental superiority imposes a responsibility to care for and nurture others, not kill them (I don't say I agree with it, I just suggest it!). True superiority has ramifications that are inconvenient for its possessor as well as ones to its advantage. Would it be the ultimate proof of mental superiority to kill off every other species, and thereby bring about your own eventual demise? I do not think there is a causal relationship at all between killing and intelligence. At the "lowest" level, killing is incidental to survival. Moral overtones only exist for human beings.
Exchange initiated by Scott Zibble
Subject: Hal's motivation
...what about the three officers who were in stasis? I pretty much assumed at the time that HAL had simply gotten rid of them. There didn't seem to be any other logical explanation. THEY, however, WERE an important part of the mission, were they not? So, although I do agree the view that HAL was "a crazy evil computer" is invalid, how would you explain this part, per se?
(U) ...if HAL went to all that trouble to dump Dave and Frank, he's not going to let those other three wake up and give him more problems later on - get rid of the lot of them in one go. Very sensible (as HAL always is). Remember, my angle is that HAL was in effect single mindedly dedicated to a successful mission. He tested Dave and Frank and found their commitment and reliability wanting, therefore it was entirely logical for HAL to get rid of them and rely on his own knowledge and capability. I'd do the same if I was HAL, tidy the place up a bit, all these stupid people wandering around.
(S) I think what you're saying, though, is still justifying the "evil computer" argument. Although HAL himself is not inherently evil, by having humans program him, he has learned "evil." There is a very strong motif in the movie made that HAL should be feared, almost to the point you'd think Kubrick was a luddite. One of the images I can't get out of my head is the eerie moments when we stare into HAL's eye that last much longer than looking at any single character... I'm sure if we looked at a human that long, we'd see them as a murderer right away... it's almost a convention in horror movies.
(U) Not sure about that, if it was that simple to catch murderers I'd have thought eye gazing would long have been a key element in detective work. But Kubrick does show us plenty of eye shots, whether they are of Hal or Dave or even apemen. I never thought of Hal being something to fear, merely something to understand. I don't think "evil" is a concept that has any meaning for Hal, apart from something filed away under a heading of "things to know about human beings". But maybe I'm wrong!
Exchange initiated by Scott Lloyd
(S) I agree with your analysis of Hal's motivation, but you make it a little unclear what the "human error" was that caused Hal to act the way that he did.
I've seen the film more than 30 times and this is how I understand it.
Dr. Floyd's insistence on "absolute secrecy" regarding the monolith was the source of the problem. To emphasise this point, Dr. Floyd's briefings neatly "bookend" the Discovery sequences.
In a nutshell, the true nature of the mission is kept from Bowman and Poole. Hal and the hibernating scientists are the only ones on board who know that they are on their way to Jupiter to encouter this alien life. Hal, programmed to monitor Bowman and Poole's awareness and make sure that the secret is intact, prepared for the crew psychology report.
However, asking the questions (stating in effect "Do you have suspicions about the purpose of the mission?") clearly raises suspicions about the purpose of the mission. The AE35 failure prediction was intended to draw attention away from the question. Clearly, then, it was Dr. Floyd who inadvertantly killed the crew of Discovery by not allowing Hal to be honest with them. The direction to not harm a human being was not made a mission imperative to Hal. Keeping the anticipated alien encounter "absolutely secret" was.
Curiously, it is Dave, not Hal, who fulfills the purpose of the mission. Isn't it ironic that the human fulfilled what the machine feared he would not?
The Picturephone in 2001 was designed by my Telecommunications Professor. He was a Bell Labs engineer who worked of the AT&T Picturephone and designed the boxy TV set like device you see in the movie.
He no longer believes in the Picturephone as a useful device, but he did develop a friendship with Arthur C. Clarke as a result.
(U) That's probably because I'm unclear myself! I don't know that I ever thought "Hal did this because humans did that". Rather than think in terms of "causes" and "consequences", I tend to think merely of "events". Things happen, and there are relationships between them, but there is a difference between one event "causing" another (an active relationship) and one event occurring "because of" another (a passive relationship). A big difference between 2001 and 2010 is that Kubrick never attempted to explain why Hal acted the way he did, he just presented things happening and left it to us to decide what may or may not have caused any of it. It's only in 2010 that we hear the "explanation" about Hal being fed conflicting information.
All I really tried to do in my discourse was say, look, here's one interpretation of part of 2001. I never meant to present it as "the" answer, and it's good that so many people have written and said "OK, but here's my version".
There are still many unanswered questions in my mind about 2001, and I am happy to accept that they will always be unanswered. For example, why did Hal finally respond to Dave when Dave returns with Frank's body? It doesn't really make sense. But it is another "event", and later events only occur the way they do because Hal's response eventually proved to be his downfall. If Hal had just ignored Dave, everything else would have been different. Hal's response does not actively cause subsequent events to occur, but nevertheless they do occur because of Hal's response.
Yeah, all the way through we have this up-ending or reversal. Frank the human watches his parents without a flicker of emotion, yet Hal the machine wishes him a "happy birthday".
Exchange initiated by Tim Quigley. Tim runs the New Visions Photography site, which you can find linked in my Places page - a place worth a visit or two!
(T) Hey... I enjoyed your HAL piece and your site in general... 2001 and Kubrick are right at the top of my lists for movie / director. You've really placed a nice effort into your under-the skin portayal of the HAL 9000.
If I accept all this you say about how it works... then really isn't HAL just an extension of Stanley Kubrick's idea of what a computer is or could be? And isn't his message that no matter how perfect the machine or the technology... the common denominator is that both are just as flawed as the other? HAL was designed with the higher level of morality incorporated into him, but that is eventually his undoing. His whole programming was made by a human (or by other computers with the same human creators... ergo they are flawed, too.) And it took a human being to defeat him with about the only thing they couldn't program into him... the lack of heart and emotion that allowed Dave to ultimately defeat him.
Again...this to me is Kubrick's moral statement of man and seeking perfection in the embodiment of this HAL 9000... that can't be possible in Kubrick's World. And it is a good example of many of the themes Kubrick asks the viewer to chew on throughout the movie.
(U)It's interesting that you reverse the usual human/machine comparison! That the one thing they couldn't program into HAL was "the LACK of heart and emotion that allowed Dave to ultimately defeat him". Always we hear it the other way round, that it is the machine that by nature lacks the heart and emotion that characterises human beings. So the natural progression is that HAL is the emotional entity in 2001, the human beings are emotionless. Fascinating! I like it, but of course it is entirely in keeping with what Kubrick showed us - those dispassionate people (Frank watching his parents) vs the caring computer (HAL wishing Frank a happy birthday).
"Kubrick's moral statement of man and seeking perfection in the embodiment of this HAL 9000... that can't be possible in Kubrick's World. And it is a good example of many of the themes Kubrick asks the viewer to chew on throughout the movie."
Absolutely! I've had discussions with someone else who pointed out a number of things in 2010, rather than 2001, that I hadn't really considered, notably the emotional tie between Dave and HAL. There is quite a charged scene in 2010 where "Dave" appears to Floyd and leads him into the pod bay. "Dave" moves close to HAL and goes through those ageing sequences, but there's a bit of electricity there between them. In the end, Dave and HAL are the last two survivors in 2001 and the only ones who have direct experience of whatever force the monolith represents. Not surprising that there should be a bond between them, and it's possible to see signs of this developing in 2001 that almost makes their joint survival inevitable. Frank, after all, is pretty cool about HAL. His fate is something that almost has moral overtones. Given the role that Clarke and Kubrick chose to give him, there was a point in the course of events at which Frank really became superfluous.
Exchange initiated by George Galanis
(G) I still look at your 2001 pages occasionally, really interesting stuff. I have just watched 2001 again recently while keeping in mind the things that have been written in your pages, and I have some thoughts that you might be interested in.
I was quite intrigued by the chess game between HAL and Frank, particularily after some of the comments that people have made about HAL's incorrect use of chess notation. On past viewings of 2001 I have not paid much attention to the chess game, but this time I set up a chess board and studied the position. The movie takes up the game just before Frank, playing white, resigns. From the position of white's pieces, it appears that Frank has played into a trap set by HAL. HAL has baited Frank into moving his queen over into Black's (HAL's) queen rook area by sacrificing a rook. The only other piece that Frank has developed is a knight, which appears to have taken pawns which HAL sacrificed to get the knight out of the way. All of Frank's other pieces are undeveloped (sitting on the back row not exerting any significant influence in the game) which in chess is equivalent to "hibernation". HAL has focussed on the development of his own pieces towards Frank's king. With Frank's queen and knight convieniently out of the way, busy capturing pawns, HAL is able to checkmate Frank, even though HAL has a material disadvantage.
The activity in the chess game appears remarkably similiar to events later in the mission. Most of the humans are hibernating, like white's undeveloped chess pieces. HAL uses the AE35 failure as bait to get both Frank and Dave out of the ship pursuing relatively minor problems while he (HAL) continues on with his plan of taking over the mission by killing all the crew members and locking Dave out. Dave and Frank are similar to white's queen and knight which have been drawn across the chess board by HAL where they are essentially ineffective. The chess game suggests that HAL was considering employing a strategy of laying bait to achieve his goals. The implication is that the strategy of getting Dave and Frank out of the ship using the AE35 failure is premeditated. HAL may have been testing this strategy in the chess game with Frank to see how likely it was to work in real life.
(U) How carefully planned out was that chess game, or is it the case that, like the whole film, it is possible to draw parallels out?
(G) I remember reading that Kubrick is actually a very good chess player. So I wouldn't be suprised if Kubrick spent some time planning out the chess game. After all, he went to a lot of trouble to shoot the footage for the TV in front of the sleeping Floyd on the PANAM space shuttle. Kubrick was quite deliberately concerned with that level of detail.
(U) I still can't help thinking that, despite Frank's apparently rather befuddled state, he was shown to be studying the game quite intently, and would not have fallen for any out and out tricks, even if he was not playing with any great skill.
(G) I agree that Frank was studying the game intently. However when I said Frank fell into a trap, I didn't mean that he made a "blunder" as such, but rather that HAL appears to have gained the "initiative" in the game. In chess terminology the player with the "initiative" is the one setting the agenda while the other player merely responds.
There are two possible reasons that I can think of that Frank played the game the way he did. The first possibility is that Frank was a relative novice at chess (compared to HAL) and he captured the pieces sacrificed by HAL without being aware of conventional chess theory, i.e., Frank captured the HAL's rook with his queen because he could not see himself losing 4 or 5 moves down the track, then he captured one pawn and then another with his knight and still no sign of losing the game, etc. This goes against conventional chess theory, which says, avoid moving a single piece too many times in the opening, and don't bring your queen out too soon. Frank broke both these rules.
The second possibility is that Frank was an expert chess player. He captured the pieces sacrificed by HAL in full knowledge that he was going to have to weather the storm that HAL was about to unleash. This strategy is used by expert chess players and has produced some of the most interesting games ever played. One player will offer to sacrifice a minor piece (usually a pawn, but sometimes a knight or rook etc. which is not part of the main action) for the opportunity to gain the"initiative". If the other player accepts the sacrifice, he also accepts that he will lose the initiative and suffer the ensuing attack. If the player with the "initiative" can make the attack sufficiently strong the player with the "initiative" will win. However if the player with the "initiative" can not sustain the attack he will end up behind in material (number of pieces) and at the mercy of his opponent. At the point of accepting the sacrifice it is usually anyone's game. In the chess game between Frank and HAL, HAL sustained the attack and won. However in HAL's attempt to take over the mission, HAL could not sustain the attack, and ended up immobile and at Dave's mercy.
Anyway, that's what I noticed on my last viewing. It's amazing that every time I watch the movie I see something more in it. Your pages were of particular significance, I wouldn't have looked at this aspect of the movie if it wasn't for your comments pages in particular.
It's hard to make out what happens after Dave disconnects Hal.
I have written quite a lot about Dave disconnecting Hal, and the manner in which Hal responds. Just as Dave succeeds in silencing Hal, a monitor comes to life behind him. It shows Heywood Floyd making a prerecorded announcement. He informs Dave (the only person left alive on Discovery) of the events that we have seen at Tycho (which Dave knew nothing about). We learn that the radio transmission from Tycho was aimed at Jupiter, and, by implication, that this is the reason why the mission is also headed for Jupiter.
We learn, too, that Hal knew about the monolith, and so did the three hibernating astronauts. Dave and Frank were the only two who were not told, because they had to be conscious throughout the mission in case anything happened and they were needed to take some sort of action. Telling them about the monolith might have affected their ability to behave rationally. On arrival at Jupiter, the three other astronauts would have been woken and, given their knowledge, would have been able to make contact with whatever they might find there.
But Hal has killed all three of them, and Frank! And Dave has now effectively killed Hal! Dave learns the truth about the nature of the mission, but it is too late. He is on his own. Floyd's announcement tells him what happened, but does not explain anything because Floyd assumed the other three would have the knowledge they needed to proceed.
The aliens, via the monolith, gave mankind the cranial capacity to understand tools. This started with the bone, and eventually progressed to building HAL himself. As a result, the principle theory of evolution (survival of the fittest) took off in a new direction, in which "fittest" could also mean "the most intelligent" and not necessarily just the strongest, swiftest, etc. Dave "outsmarting" HAL by entering the ship via the escape hatch is another example of this. By outsmarting HAL, Dave was able to survive while HAL was terminated.
Did Dave 'outsmart' Hal? Dave had two things which Hal did not: the ability to move at will in three dimensions, and the ability to manipulate at close range. The nearest Hal was able to come to this was to use the spacepod to sever Frank's life support systems - effective once, in open space, but very clumsy. It was a pretty smart thing for Hal to do, nevertheless, given his limited physical potential.
The only way to determine which was the smarter of the two would have been to create identical capabilities for both, and see which one came out on top. Dave and Hal both used the means that happened to be available to them, and in this case Dave's physical ability overcame Hal's rather primitive psychology. Dave did not outsmart Hal, because Hal never had that particular skill to be smart about!
What happens on board Discovery seems clear enough, but then it becomes very confusing.
And so, we come to the ultimate encounter. There, among the moons of Jupiter, we see the monolith once again, evidently the one that received the transmission from Tycho and is now waiting for the inevitable contact with human life. Given his limited knowledge, what can Dave do? We see him leave Discovery in a spacepod and head towards the monolith, and suddenly Kubrick gives us another almost mystical alignment of heavenly bodies. Dave is sucked into an insane journey through the boundaries of finite space - one of the most celebrated and baffling scenes in the history of the cinema.
As if the journey is not baffling enough, Kubrick caps it with a scene so apparently normal that it becomes, if anything, even more baffling. After soaring across some alien landscapes, Dave suddenly looks out of his spacepod window - shaking with shock - to see a completely conventional room! In the following scenes, we see Dave at various stages in ageing. How long does this take? We have no way of knowing. Is Dave imprisoned in the rooms for his entire lifetime, or does it all happen in a few minutes?
Finally, Dave is on his deathbed. At the point of death, what should appear once more? The monolith! The unknown alien force has been with humankind from its origins in the stone age on Earth to the death of the first human being to make direct contact with it. What we see in the end is the star- child that Dave has become gazing with inscrutable eyes at the Earth Dave left behind. Why? For what reason or purpose? How?
Kubrick left us with that puzzle. There is no answer. Nobody knows why, or what. Since 1968, what we have had is several million viewers of 2001 with several million different opinions. There will never be any explanation. Don't look for answers from anyone else. Enjoy the experience, and let it suggest its own meaning through your own experience.
Exchange initiated by Bob Lee
(B)This is my first reply to mail using the Netscape Navigator... I always wondered how people copied all those lines and managed to put a > in front of them all... now I know... it happens automatically!
The JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) is planning on including aboard the Cassini mission a CDROM or video disk that has millions of people's signatures scanned onto it.
(U) Why? Is this really where technology has brought us? I bet if they found a tree up there, they'd send a remote probe to carve initials all over it. If there are aliens, and they have any sense, they'd be giving the Solar System a wide berth, methinks.
(B) Yes, you are probably right. I always thought the gold plaque sent on the Voyagers along with a recording of various people saying hello in various languages was silly and this is probably in that tradition. Anything to keep the public interest up. But from a personal standpoint, if they are going to do it, then why not add your name to go out to Saturn? I guess that it doesn't weigh much ... less than the golf club and ball one of the Apollo astronauts took to the moon. One good sign that we aren't all buffoons... Luna Corp. has a program going where they will send a rover to the Moon with a camera attached so that schools can view the moon as it drives around (and sometimes control it themselves). They have promised not to drive all over the historic landing sites like the Apollo 11 first landing site and footprints!
The monolith is seen in four different places throughout the movie. It may be the same one, being moved around once it has served its purpose in a particular place. First, it appeared on Earth to begin the "dawn of man". Then, it was moved to the moon. Four million years later, man reaches the moon and finds it there. Finally, it "disappeared" from the lunar surface and reappeared near Jupiter.
HAL prevented Dave from learning about this by disabling the AE-35 unit, so Dave unwittingly continued on his mission toward the theoretical point of transmission of the monolith (Jupiter). When he finds it there, he "advances" yet again by coming into direct contact with these super- intelligent beings.
Lastly, he sees the monolith on his deathbed, signifying that his death is actually the start of a new life on Earth. He is reborn on earth as some kind of super- intelligent being, a messiah if you will, and soon the super- intelligence that he brings to Earth in the form of a human baby will spread to all humans, through the special genes that the aliens have provided him with.
The aliens, then, are using him in a sense to pass along their superior intelligence to humankind.
I pose the question in my Discourse - Legacy page about how many monoliths there are out of interest, not as a way of suggesting anything significant. For the same monolith to 'disappear' from Tycho and reappear near Jupiter, there would have to have been some form of physical intervention. I would imagine Tycho would have been kept under pretty close watch, so you would hope someone would have noticed an alien carrying it away! In the days of Moonwatcher, the alien would have been free to move the monolith around at will. Even if whichever ape- person was around at the time found it a bit surprising, there would not have been much they could have done or communicated about it, whereas at Tycho a movement of fractional dimensions would have been enough to set alarms off all around the Earth.
I am happy, in this case, to take a cue from 2010, which tells us the Tycho monolith was transported to Earth. Not that it was much use when it arrived. We learn that it has remained impenetrable, and it is never referred to again. We can please ourselves, about how many other monoliths there were in all.
But that transmission from Tycho is a clue. Where would it have been transmitted to, if not to another monolith / monitoring station? We are not made aware of any actual aliens there, so there must have been something already in the Jupiter region to receive the signal. In fact, this was the basis for the whole voyage to Jupiter by Discovery. Floyd was probably hoping for the three hibernating astronauts to awake to the greetings of an extraterrestrial, but another monolith was always the most obvious thing.
I never thought in terms of Dave's final incarnation as a star- child as an exercise in becoming super- intelligent, though it was an idea that seemed to gain popular acceptance. We always think that evolution leads to something greater, but that is not true - it only leads to a better adaptation to environment. In a post- nuclear holocaust, high intellect may not be the immediate goal of evolution! It is the finale of the film, so we have no idea what the effect will be. It could be the opposite, that all experience and knowledge have been stripped from Dave for the benefit / diversion of the aliens, leaving him as a helpless child with only the fleeting memories of intelligence on Earth to ponder (hence the closing image). Again, one person can make just as valid a supposition as any other person.
Are the aliens "studying" Dave in that "hotel suite"? They may be so advanced as to have no need for physical bodies, but would have to provide Dave with food, air, shelter and the other things necessary to sustain his life as a human being for the duration of their tests. They would also have had to look after his mental well- being to overcome loneliness, depression or even suicidal tendencies, perhaps by providing him with a sort of "companionship", by entering and affecting his thought processes.
Why does Dave see himself at various ages? Is time passing very quickly for Dave, because of the intellectual stimulation provided by the alien intervention in his thoughts? Perhaps he is so happy to be in their presence that he loses track of time completely. He has everything a human needs, the most comfortable atmosphere that they could provide him with. But the one thing they cannot do is remove his essence from his physical body (or maybe they have chosen not to, for some reason), and so he continues to age.
We think in linear terms of both the passage of time and the pace at which it occurs, but Kubrick has just hurled us through unimaginable distances across the universe. What would time mean at the far end? Looking backwards over a life, old age and childhood are just two facets of one existence, only separated by time in the here and now. Once they exist, the conditions do so simultaneously.
In my Connections page, I have two photos of myself, one recent and one taken in my youth. For me to travel from one to the other took around 30 years (hence my reason for having them both in), yet now you can look at both pictures side by side. If time had no meaning, they would merely be two equally true representations of what is me, without significance in terms of age or temporal displacement (heck! I wish that were true!).
We do not know enough about how the universe operates in reality, let alone a piece of fiction, to say that Dave could only pass from youth to old age by a process of gradual aging. Dave's face through his visor shows him to have aged considerably even before he has stopped shivering from shock and is stripped of his spacesuit! The spacepod appears in one scene, and has vanished without explanation in the next. We see Dave eating, but no sign of where the food comes from or who does the washing up. Time has no meaning in those final scenes (no clocks). For all we know, time could be operating in reverse, or cycling backwards and forwards, or simply not be a characteristic of existence in that environment.
Exchange initiated by Rich Allen
(R) I watched "2001: ASO" for the first time two days ago. To be perfectly honest, after the last scene I was left confused, bored, and angered. Angered only because 139 minutes of my life had just been stolen from someone I trusted (Kubrick). I was led to believe that this film was to change my life, so I searched for a site that could help me understand what had just happened.
Your site got many ideas stirring in my head, and left me with the desire to view the film again (a sensation I thought I would never experience after my first viewing). I was especially interested in your HAL! page. I like the theory of HAL "testing" his crewmates with the AE-35 failure. My initial viewing, coupled with some of the information that I have read on your site brought many questions to my mind, one of which... In the scene where Frank and Dave are conspiring to "unplug" HAL in the space module, wouldn't HAL respond to Dave's (or was it Frank's) request to open the hatch? HAL doesn't answer but he must have been able to read his lips (as later revealed by HAL), right? So if HAL did in fact understand the request, why did he not open the hatch? At this point HAL did not want to kill them, so he was not trying to suffocate them... He also would not have any knowledge that they were going to converse within the pod. What made HAL "decide" not to open the pod door? Human Instinct?
Your page has much in common with the actual film in that it raises more questions than those that are answered.
(U) It's hard coming new to a film that has acquired such a cult status. All those expectations, it ought to be good! What you have described is pretty much the way the critics originally saw 2001, and they probably had it easier than you because they came to it without any preconceptions.
I wonder how you saw it? I can tell you that the full-scale Cinerama treatment is quite different from a standard movie cinema or video screening. It isn't exactly an action packed film, and especially compared to most current films it would be easy to find it draggy. Seeing it the way it was originally meant to be seen, though, is so stunning that there isn't really time to be bored!
Also, I don't think 2001 changed anybody's life in one hit! At the time, though, it really did open up a completely new view of what science fiction films could be all about. It wasn't all about plastic monsters and slimy aliens, and it didn't go on about right and wrong or good and bad. There was no attempt to tell anyone what to think. It just kind of... was. "Here it is, make up your own mind".
The way I tell it, there IS no explanation for 2001. There is no such thing as a "book of answers", and there are no experts to enlighten us. "Understanding" it is entirely personal. What it changed for me was the notion that there had to be neat answers for everything. A lot of the time, all there is is questions. If you like answers, that can be hard. I kind of like it so open ended - there are still mysteries out there! (Partly why the X Files is so successful?)
My discourse is really a personal view, just one way of interpreting part of the film. But because the film is so open ended, everyone can read their own interpretations into it. Which is what they've been doing ever since the movie first appeared!
See, you're trying to figure it out already! And you will never know what's right or wrong! One thing that still puzzles me after all this time is - why did HAL eventually reply to Dave when he was trying to get back in? I can come up with suggestions, but I will never know for sure.
Actually, (with regard to my page raising more questions than it answers) I take that as a compliment! It would bother me if anyone read it and decided that it solved all their problems with the film!
Like this email, in fact. I know it doesn't answer any of your questions, and doesn't say "if you look at the film like this you will understand it". In the end, 2001 either connects or it doesn't. Either way, it's fine!
Thanks for writing, I hope this note doesn't confuse you even more!
Exchange initiated by Cyndi
(C) After reading your message, I wanted to ask you to reply me your web-site address, I would love to see it. I loved the movie and I've seen it a half dozen times but, and don't laugh at me... I've never been able to really understand it. My husband and I have always been "space fiction buffs" but he is as confused as I am. Any suggestion?
(U) This Web's a funny thing, isn't it? Several times I have searched for anything to do with Gary Lockwood and turned up nothing, yet I found your photo completely by accident. And now it turns out you're a bit of a 2001 fan! Leastways, you might be if you had some idea what it was all about. Wonderful!
I like to tell people that nobody has "the answers", not Clarke, not Kubrick. And that's one of the reasons why it's such a great film! Someone made a film, and left people to figure out what it meant for themselves! And if they couldn't figure it out, hey, it didn't matter, nor could anyone else, and it was still an incredible experience. Life isn't a neat set of rules or answers, and it sure isn't Hollywood. For me, 2001 is more real because it doesn't pretend that everything fits conveniently into place. Kubrick says "here is my vision, make of it what you like", while he ducks back into his mansion well away from awkward questions.
It seems like I'm ducking out too maybe, but that's really how it seems to me. EVERYONE who watches it is confused, me too! So it comes down to whether you can live with that or not. A lot of people can't, and don't understand what all the fuss is about with 2001. I'm not going to tell you what it all means, because I don't know! And nor does anyone else! And if anyone tries to tell you, just ignore them, because they know no more than you do. All anyone knows is what appears on that movie screen. I just marvel at the experience.
But, still, if you go through the site maybe you will pick up some hints. You will also see that even 2001 fans are very divided when it comes to explaining it! Have a look at the Interchange page, for example.
Anyhow, hope that kind of non-answer doesn't disappoint you!
(C) Thanks...that's as well put of an answer as I've ever heard. In fact it was darn good. I really enjoyed your comments relative to Clark, and while it doesn't explain the movie... it explains the relationship of the movie to the mind.
(U) Well, that makes me feel better! I thought maybe you'd think I was NOT giving you an explanation, but you've actually summed it up really well - "the relationship of the movie to the mind" - I like that!
Exchange initiated by Andrew Daneman
In my opinion (and yours as well), there is no film more worthy of our contemplation and meditation than the enduring classic, 2001. It is a prophecy, an enigma, an invitation, and rather entertaining as well. A remarkable aspect of the film is the enduring quality of its aesthetic. With all of the modern advances in computer graphics and special effects, no film has ever had an aesthetic surreality to it that can even compare to 2001. Think about it. The last 40 minutes of the film have no dialogue whatsoever, and yet the viewer is left with the impression that this is a very important event in his life. Mr. Kubrick has been quoted as saying that MGM had no idea they were funding a 10.5 million dollar religious movie.
And it is with that statement that I will offer to you the writer's own personal take on this enigmatic phenomenon. It is a religious film, pure and simple. It is not about unseen aliens. It is about God. However, it doesn't make a single statement about God. And thus, it remains an enigma. It is an imaginative encounter with an unseen God.
The effect of the transformation from ordinary man to starchild that occurs to Bowman might be called illumination, or evolution of consciousness. As the apes became men, and man became starchild, the obelisk is a sign that a perfect force is guiding the species towards its inevitable destiny. As we study biological theories of evolution, we notice a lack of a convincing account for the arising of human features such as love, compassion, and increased consciousness itself. 2001 hints towards what might fill in the gap of our lack of definitive understanding. And, as we ponder the ancestors of man and the changes that lead to our present state, so do we ponder ourselves as ancestors for that which is to come. Right?
Well, there is one aspect of the entire scenario that causes me great consternation. That aspect should cause us all to ponder the implications of the film on the future. One of the sources the world has for where it might have come from is the Bible. No doubt many people believe that the God of all creation has communicated himself to the world through that book. Let us take an objective look at one of the passages of the Bible that might somehow be related to 2001, a film about God.
Genesis 3:2-5
"And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
FOR GOD DOTH KNOW THAT IN THE DAY YE EAT THEROF, THEN YOUR EYES SHALL BE OPENED, AND YE SHALL BE AS GODS, KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL."
I am sure you have heard the story. But, please note the amazing similarity between the deception of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, with the promise of illumination bestowed upon us by the unseen force in 2001. This hidden force pulls us along, keeping man in the dark, until the inevitable encounter occurs. I believe that there is something very important about this.
The Bible relates to us many times that at the end of this present world, there will arise the greatest deception the planet has ever seen, culminating in the worship of a vast imposter as God himself. Given the fact that the promise of "enlightenment" was the first deception to come the way of man, I see no reason to suspect that this same lie will not continue to deceive man as long as it changes forms. The supernatural aura of 2001 is a testimony to the fact.
There are a multitude of "signs" that tell us that the God of the Bible is about to bring this grand deception on the earth (the tension around Israel was prophecied in numerous scriptures thousands of years ago), and I believe that the promise of godhood for man will play a role in the deception. I'm sorry if you find this theory ignorant and offensive, but I believe it to be true. You have a wonderful page, and 2001 is indeed an amazing spectacle to behold. But in the final analysis, it just might be the most seductive lie the earth has ever seen. What do you say?
(U) Many thanks for your extensive note.
The last 40 minutes of the film have no dialogue whatsoever, and yet the viewer is left with the impression that this is a very important event in his life.
And one that has lasted for many people through all the years since.
Mr. Kubrick has been quoted as saying that MGM had no idea they were funding a 10.5 million dollar religious movie.
Now, I have to be careful here, because I don't come at things from a religious angle and never took that remark literally. Piers Bizony, who wrote "2001- filming the future", said a few words about this at Cyberfest - as he put it, Kubrick's use of the word "religious" wasn't meant in the way people usually think of it. Of course, that is nothing more or less than Piers' own personal opinion (and he didn't tell us exactly what he had in mind!). But I think Clarke, outwardly at least, gave the impression that he was writing about aliens. Now, I believe that concept of "aliens" can be translated in many different ways, and certainly it can be taken as a metaphor for God. But, of course, if you are not a believer to start with, it is unlikely that that would be the way you would go.
Despite that, I can go along with much of what you write.
However, it doesn't make a single statement about God. And thus, it remains an enigma.
The effect of the transformation from ordinary man to starchild that occurs to Bowman might be called illumination, or evolution of consciousness. As the apes became men, and man became starchild, the obelisk is a sign that a perfect force is guiding the species towards its inevitable destiny. As we study biological theories of evolution, we notice a lack of a convincing account for the arising of human features such as love, compassion, and increased consciousness itself. 2001 hints towards what might fill in the gap of our lack of definitive understanding.
And, as we ponder the ancestors of man and the changes that lead to our present state, so do we ponder ourselves as ancestors for that which is to come. Right?
Yes. My take is a little different to most, though, I think. I've already said I don't have a religious approach, but at the same time I do not accept that so-called "proven" "scientific" theories have all the answers. The way I see it, evolution is currently the most satisfactory explanation, but only in the sense that it is rather less full of holes than other explanations. For myself, I look at it as the best we can do given our current state of understanding of what makes the universe tick, but that understanding still has a long way to go. It's just that I don't personally expect the final answer to be "God". I think the final answer will be something that is beyond our comprehension at this point in history, and I find it hard to take my own guidance from things that were written down at an even earlier point in history.
In a way, I don't think that is so far away from what you write, though you may disagree. I do see a "bigger picture", if you like, outside the "conventional" boundaries of what we see in 2001. I'm just not prepared to give it a name - any name - right now.
Like many people, I see the signs of the terrible things happening in the world - it's hard not to see them! There is no doubt that human beings, whether left to their own devices or ignorantly choosing to follow a path in the opposite direction to enlightenment, are making a pretty dreadful mess of things. How will it end? I don't know. I don't have the inner certainty that there is a "higher force" waiting to intervene. 2001 was something very rare in the present age: a film of great optimism and awe, of the wonder to be beheld in mankind finally leaving his home planet. That's something no other film I know of has ever given us.
...there is no question in my mind of regarding your theory either ignorant or offensive. I know I don't have the final answers at hand, and in that situation who is not ignorant?
But in the final analysis, it just might be the most seductive lie the earth has ever seen. What do you say?
I say, that is a very provocative and altogether appropriate way to sign off.
(A) Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm glad you enjoyed the letter. Like I said, I enjoyed your website.
In obedience to my Lord, I feel I would be remiss in not extending an offer of His hope to you. The world is in such a mess because sin has entered the creation, and soon it is going to run its dreadful course as a witness to the world of its inevitable destruction. However, we have this promise, "Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.
'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." (Revelation 1:7,8).
The God who created it all is still alive and well, though many do not acknowledge the fact. The day of His grace is closing, and the day of His wrath is approaching. I would invite you to investigate the claims of Jesus and receive His eternal life while there is time. He claims to be coming again, and that is an assurance that there is a higher power waiting to intervene at the appointed time. God bless and take care.
Exchange initiated by Tim Quigley
I saw this movie in London, England the day of its premier in a theater at Oxford Circus... I was about 17 at the time and on vacation there that summer with my parents and they wanted to go off and do some shopping without me. So they stuck me in the movie and I had no idea exactly what the movie was all about. I'd seen the posters outside of the spaceships and the monkeys but I wasn't expecting what I saw.
For the next three hours I was mesmerized by this movie and special effects. When it was over... I couldn't stop describing this movie to my parents and went on and on about this almost cosmic movie I'd just experienced... It was spectacular to say the least... the theater was especially set up for the movie with one of those curved walls that were popular in theaters of that time for cinemascope movies and it had the sound setup, too. I'd never heard or seen anything like it... anyone who missed the opportunity to see it like that has missed the whole experience of the movie... today's theaters are too small screened and TV of course is all out of proportion since it doesn't have the correct aspect ratio that the original theaters did.
This movie has always been a great thrill to me as it was the movie by which all other space movies were measured by for me. It's been fun and enlightening to see others on the Internet with similar passions for this and other Kubrick works. Thanks for your site... I wanted to setup a link to your site on my site and I always ask permission from the host site before I do it..let me know if it's a problem... thanks.
(U) Have you, by any chance, had a look at SCIFI.CON? One of the other booths there, apart from mine, is by DelRey, the publishers of "3001: The Final Odyssey", and they have included an extract in their page. It ends: "We're bringing aboard a thousand-year-old astronaut. And I can guess who it is." Are we about to meet Frank again, after a millenium? I'm trying to get permission to use the extract in my own site.
"I saw this movie in London, England the day of its premier in a theater at Oxford Circus."
Was this the original premier, or a rerun? It may be the Casino, which is quite near Oxford Circus, where I also saw it.
"I couldn't stop describing this movie to my parents and went on and on about this almost cosmic movie I'd just experienced."
They looked at you a bit funny, yes? Or were they more receptive?
"anyone who missed the opportunity to see it like that has missed the whole experience of the movie"
You bet! I try to make that point quite strongly. 2001 as it was originally meant to be seen is a true experience.
"It's been fun and enlightening to see others on the Internet with similar passions for this and other Kubrick works."
I had no idea anyone else thought as much about 2001 as I did until I opened the site up, and it has been a revelation to get all the responses. I really appreciate you sending your thoughts, it's great when I receive something that gets me thinking some more about it. I had always planned to develop my "Discourse" pages further into more "serious" interpretations of 2001, and the intention is still there, but the responses that became the Viewpoints part of the site kind of took over!
(T) Hey...Thanks for the reply... I know you are busy and an actual reply to my previous message isn't actually necessary... I've been drilling down into your site more and in other people's, too. It 's really fun to see so many people so affected by the movie... it reminds me of Close Encounters and all the people who supposedly had contact with aliens from all over the world... they all started discovering they had similar experiences and all started heading for Devil's Mountain. The Internet... Devil's Mountain kind of... with sites like yours having a meeting point to see others reaction... Kubrick's other favorite film of mine is A Clockwork Orange. Again a penetrating look at human values, the future and the Ultra Violent. And the cimematography is so wild... another favorite. Malcolm McDowell had his greatest performance as an actor in this movie and will always be immortalized in that part.
Exchange initiated by Cyndi. A little background to this one. The Showcase pages include a signed photograph of Gary Lockwood (Frank Poole from 2001). It was Cyndi who in fact supplied me with this picture, and the story of how she acquired it is interesting enough to be worth passing on.
(C) About 3 times a year I travel to Los Angeles for something known as Ray Courts Autograph Show. Ray usually has anywhere from 50 to 100 celebrities there for signings. The show that Gary attended was in June...
The celebrities sit at tables and sign just about anything you hand them (for a price)... in Gary's case as with most of those attending, he furnishes his own photos and I selected the ' 2001' photos for him to sign. Yes they do chat with you but it depends on how busy their lines are. In some cases there may be 50 people waiting and in other cases, you may be the only one in line. Also, if you stay at the event hotel, you can usually meet them in the lobby, lounge or restaurant after hours.
I did not have an opportunity to talk with Gary other than a few cordial exchanges because I had two different shows in L.A. to cover in the same day and I did not see him around the hotel that night... Sometimes the celebrities will give you their phone numbers and on occassions they have called me... wanting to know if I can help find them a spot in a local signing event or if I need more photos signed. You never can tell... it's really quite fascinating to answer the phone and it be a former celebrity looking for a signing show.
The end of the interchange...
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