‘How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: ‘The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.’' – Stanley Kubrick

It’s about time I finally sit down to write about my favorite movie of all time. A task that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time but never did because it felt like there was nothing left to discuss or analyze that hasn’t been done a million times in the over fifty years since its release. But there lies the true genius of the film, there is always a new perspective or appreciation to be found in every subsequent viewing. The ambiguity allows for an almost infinite number of ideas of the films true purpose and we’ve probably not even scratched the surface. I’ve probably seen this movie more times than any other and up until a few years ago I never found a reading of the film that I fully believed. Every time I’d watch it I’d come out with some new take on what certain scenes or the whole thing really means. But none of these theories ever stuck or resonated with me the way I’d want from a movie of this level. Until a few years ago I was just lost and mesmerized in the spectacle not truly knowing what was happening but not caring because I knew there was genius in there, it just needed to be found. But now I feel like I’ve come to somewhat of a grasp on an idea of what is going on.

The almost literal reading of the film is that there is some sort of Extra-Terrestrial, or maybe divine, entity dictating and guiding human evolution until the end where they deem we are ready to assume our new form and thusly create the “Star Child” using astronaut Dave Bowman. And while this sounds great and seems to fit well with the events of the story it never sat right with me. Especially when I would consider things I’d read about Stanley Kubrick or Arthur C Clarke regarding their ideas on human existence and their other works dealing with similar themes. To me it seemed like they were more trying to present questions on what it means to be human. Is the essence of our humanity separate from our physical being? Can we lose one while still maintaining the other and vice versa? This is why I always felt there was more to the movie than just watching the journey of the Evolution of Man, the story feels more grand and more ambitious than just that.

Now I firmly believe that all readings of a film are just as valid as any other as long as it can be supported properly and I for a long time was a believer in this fairly common perspective of the film and I think its well supported. But as I’ve thought about it more I now firmly believe that the movie is about quite the opposite. I’ve now come to read the film as story about the de-evolution (or backward evolution) of man that is caused by the rapid evolution of technology.

Technology is the key to my reading that I feel isn’t talked about enough when discussing the film. And I don’t just mean HAL 9000, I mean the entire technologically dependent society that is represented in their version of the year 2001. A world that has become so reliant on technology that the spectacle of these creations have become normalized and mundane. The first human we see in the film is Hayward Floyd who is asleep on a Pan Am flight to the space station. And while we, the audience, marvel at the spectacle that is space travel and the idea of casually leaving the earth, he has become so desensitized to that he’s fallen asleep. And even when he was awake he was ignoring the beautiful vista only few people get to see, and instead he was watching the television screen in front of him. Technology has become such a large part of their being that it almost becomes hard to discern between man and machine. The “humans” are about as emotionless as you can get without being dead and the machines exhibit more consciousness than anyone else. And this dichotomy is exactly what I believe the big picture of the film is about. As technology evolves and develops more and more and we continue become more reliant on it, we lose all sense of who we are as humans. When we first see a human conversation in the year 2001, it’s a petty political game between people of different nationalities trying to keep their discoveries for themselves. We’ve devolved back so much it’s like we’re still man-apes fighting over a watering hole. Technology didn’t improve our species, it just amplified who we really were all along.

Watching the movie (specifically the opening “Dawn of Man” sequence) at its face value one would believe that it’s trying to show how “humans invented tools.” But in actuality Arthur C Clarke believed that it was the other way around, it was the tools that invented humans. The film opens with a species that seem like an evolutionary intermediate between ape and man, exhibiting traits more similar to the former. When the monolith appears and seemingly develops the “man-apes’” cerebral cortex, they begin to learn how to use and develop tools starting with using a stray bone as a weapon. And this discovery of tools leads to the need for the bodies to evolutionarily develop to properly adjust. They need to develop dexterity to properly swing the bone. They need to learn to stand erect in order to properly wield the bone. These evolutionary changes are what lead the emergence of the human species, and simultaneously the end of the “man-ape” existence. Fast forward millions of years to the new millennium and we are approaching the occurrence of the same event. Technology has advanced so much that humans are no longer biological adequate enough to handle and must therefore become a new species entirely. The bones the “man-apes” use turn out to be just as deadly as we’ll see HAL 9000 is later in the film.

While the species had evolved as biological beings, the core humanity had devolved back to that of a toddler essentially. And that idea is expressed visually through a series of moments. We first see the Pan Am stewardess struggling to walk and relying on her “grip shoes” to keep her steady. The way she stumbles across the aisle emulates a young child who is just learning to walk. When it’s time for their meals on the ship their foods are served in liquid form in cartons. They can’t eat solid foods just as an infant can’t. There’s even a moment where Floyd has to read the instructions on how to use the “anti-gravity” toilet as if he were being potty trained. And of course, the entire film crescendos when Dave Bowman has become the “Star Child,” representing the re-birth of the species into a completely new one void of all remnants of humanity. It’s probably a more tragic ending than it is anything else. We as a species strive for newer, better machines but what are we giving up from ourselves for this advancement? We’ll some day reach the point where every unique aspect that marks our species as humane will become evolutionarily inferior to this new world and we’ll go out the way the “man-apes” did. Tossed aside and forgotten for new and better beings.

All this begs the question, what would Kubrick and Clarke be trying to say about humanity by showing all this? I believe a big part of the movie is to play as a warning sign as to not become to reliant on technology, an idea that seems a little too forward thinking for 1968 but that’s just a testament to the film’s genius. Obviously this idea is most upfront during the film’s most famous sequence, where the two main astronauts live their lives being watched and examined by the HAL 9000 computer while the rest of their crew are asleep with their lives literally being maintained by the same computer. But this idea is prevalent in every moment of the film from the very beginning.

2001: A Space Odyssey remains to me the greatest movie ever made and one that gets infinitely better every single time I watch it. There’s so much to unfold, think about, and analyze that I’ll probably disagree with every word of this review within the year because of some new perspective I’ll find. But the one thing I can never question is that the film is a pure display of mastery in storytelling that is stands on its own in the canon of film history and there’ll never be another film like it.

A Perfect movie if there ever was one.

*Side note: The Recent 4k release of this film is absolutely incredible and if you can get your hands on it do yourself the favor and watch it in all its glory.