This video is brought to you by Mubi,
a curated film streaming service with a twist.
You get 30 films per month,
a new film every day.
And these films are a handpicked selection
of influential movie jams from around the
globe.
We're huge fans of Mubi at ScreenPrism.
So go ahead and click the link in our description
below
to get a full month of Mubi for free.
50 Years after its release and 17
after its imagined future,
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
remains a masterwork that stunningly
doesn’t feel dated at all.
Meanwhile, its famously enigmatic ending
is as mysterious as ever.
What’s key about this ending is
it’s not like other confusing movie endings
where we’re left to debate whether option
A
or option B is the correct answer to
"what really happened?" --
you know, like “is the character dreaming,
or not,
right, or wrong, dead or alive,
really doing these things
or just imagining it all.
No, here Kubrick is experimenting with
a new kind of ending altogether.
It’s not just ambiguous;
it’s impressionistic.
2001’s ending is intended to evoke --
images, sounds, memories, suggestions, associations,
all of which which seek to produce a response
in us,
mental and emotional.
Its primary purpose is to open up, not resolve;
to inspire questions instead of answering
them.
In multiple interviews, Kubrick not only
avoided clarifying the ending,
but also spoken about how it wasn't meant
to be clear in a conventional sense.
He told Eye Magazine,
“I think that the power of the ending
is based on the subconscious emotional reaction
of the audience, which has a delayed effect...
to be specific about what it's supposed to
mean,
spoils people's pleasure and denies them
their own emotional reactions.”
He also said to Joseph Gelmis,
“If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates
the subconscious of the viewer,
if it stimulates, however inchoately,
his mythological and religious yearnings and
impulses,
then it has succeeded."
So basically if anyone walks away from 2001
with a very simple answer for what just happened,
that viewer may not be experiencing the ending
as deeply as Kubrick wanted us to.
So all of that said, what do we see
literally happened at the end?
From what we gather, advanced aliens have
been
contacting humankind through monoliths
to help them develop advanced technology
and a better understanding of the universe.
The first monolith inspires prehistoric apes
to invent the first tool --
which is a weapon for killing.
And this is essentially the moment when the
apes
become humankind as we know it --
so there’s the idea that our intelligence
may have been developed through
an outside mysterious force contacting us.
Then far in the future, around the year 2001,
the US government finds a monolith buried
under
the surface on the moon.
This monolith is sending signals to Jupiter.
So the US sends a mission to Jupiter,
but the on board the spaceship, the computer
Hal
turns on the humans and kills most of the
crew.
"Open the pod bay doors, Hal."
"I'm sorry, Dave.
I'm afraid I can't do that."
Dave Bowman manages to disconnect Hal.
But by the time they reach Jupiter,
He’s the only man alive.
He passes through a stargate of sorts.
And here’s Kubrick’s own literal explanation
of what we see after this, quote:
“He is taken into another dimension of time
and space,
into the presence of godlike entities
who have transcended matter and who are now
creatures of pure energy.
They provide an environment for him,
a human zoo, if you like.
They study him.
His life passes before him.
He sees himself age in what seems just a matter
of moments,
he dies, and he's reborn, transfigured,
enhanced, a superbeing.”
Finally, we see a starchild heading back toward
earth
and we get the sense that, perhaps,
humankind has entered a new era
of more intelligent existence.
So now let’s dig into some of the many interpretations
that have been applied to this evocative final
sequence.
2001 can be read as a film about God.
Kubrick told Eye Magazine that, quote,
“The god concept is at the heart of 2001,
but not any traditional, anthropomorphic image
of god.
I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic
religions,
but I do believe that one can construct
an intriguing scientific definition of god.”
According to Kubrick, these aliens in the
film
would seem to us like gods,
because they are so advanced in their evolution
that we couldn’t possibly understand them.
Kubrick has described them as, quote,
"beings of pure energy and spirit.
He said their potentialities would be limitless
and their intelligence ungraspable by humans.
These beings would be gods to the billions
of less advanced races in the universe,
just as man would appear a god to an ant.
They would be incomprehensible to us except
as gods..."
Kubrick’s “scientific” God-aliens who
study us
and educate us via the monolith are hardly
the warm, fuzzy conception of God
that many of us have been taught
to simply love and obey.
Kubrick’s God figure is impenetrable --
we can't really grasp anything of its nature,
let alone its motives.
As the aliens study Bowman, he becomes an
old man,
symbolically embodying the aging of all humankind.
The elderly Bowman accidentally knocks over
a glass of wine.
Some have interpreted that in this moment,
the glass represents the human body, which
will die,
while the wine represents the human spirit,
which can continue to live on outside of the
body.
This scene is immediately followed by
a dying Bowman lying in bed.
He reaches towards the fourth black monolith
we see in the film.
This shot mimics Michelangelo’s painting
“The Creation of Adam,” part of the Sistine
Chapel,
where Adam reaches out his hand toward God’s.
The visual comparison makes Bowman the original
human,
and the monolith a representation of God.
After Bowman's human form dies,
or the glass breaks,
his spirit, the wine, is reborn
as the enlightened Star Child.
What's happened to Bowman in these rooms near
the end
is a kind of enlightenment.
Critics have noted that the French 18th century
neoclassical decor recalls the Age of Enlightenment.
So Kubrick’s version of god --
these mysterious aliens pushing mankind to
progress --
seem to have as their goal, humankind’s
enlightenment.
This Star Child is even a god-like or Christ-like
figure itself
compared to the humans on earth --
This child is presumably being sent to earth
to impart some newfound wisdom to the people
and carry them toward the next step
in their evolution.
And put in those terms, this might remind
us
a little of Jesus Christ.
Kubrick was strongly influenced by Nietzsche.
He opens and closes this film with Richard
Strauss's
Thus Spake Zarathustra,
named after the Nietzsche work of the same
name.
This text centers of the concept
of the Übermensch, or superman.
It argues that the child is the last stage
of evolution before the Übermensch.
So it’s meaningful that Strauss’ music
comes back in
just as we see the starchild
moving back toward Earth --
as something more evolved than man,
maybe a precursor to the superman.
We see four Monoliths in the film,
and Rolling Stone’s Bob McClay points out
that every monolith represents a stage
in our evolution.
The first learning device turns the apes into
humans;
the second on the moon sends a signal
to alert this alien intelligence
that man has now sufficiently evolved
to find the monolith there --
so Earthbound humans have become space travelers,
even creators of their own sophisticated machines.
But before humankind can reach the next stage
of evolution,
Bowman has to unplug Hal.
"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do."
So mankind aborts this experiment
of becoming the creator.
Man kills its monstrous offspring
and instead progresses on
to another stage of evolution,
following this higher intelligence-slash-god.
This is a very interesting plot point
if we think about it in terms of today’s
fears
of AI becoming so intelligent, one day
it’ll take over the world.
"I'm always happy when surrounded by smart
people,
who also happens to be rich and powerful.
I was told that people here at the Future
Investment Initiative
are interested in future initiatives,
which means AI, which means me.
Back in 1968, Kubrick imagines that turning
point
when computers are starting to become smarter
than man.
But the story says no --
our destiny isn’t just to stagnate
and let our machines dominate us.
Our destiny is in a different direction,
because we humans aren’t finished in our
evolution.
So the third monolith near Jupiter is a kind
of portal,
that ushers humanity into a stage
of reflection and examination,
communing closely with these mysterious greater
beings.
Then the fourth monolith appears near Bowman’s
deathbed
just before he’s reborn as the star child
that surpasses our current consciousness.
When the film came out,
Kubrick told the The New York Times:
“Somebody said man is the missing link
between primitive apes and civilized human
beings.
We are semicivilized, capable of cooperation
and affection,
but needing some sort of transfiguration
into a higher form of life.
Man is really in a very unstable condition.”
That’s such an interesting thought because
we talk
a lot about how we evolved into our current
state,
and we think about the future state
of our lifestyle or planet.
but we don’t always think much about how
we ourselves
might continue evolve in the future.
The starchild’s identity and form is unknown,
as mysterious to us as we are now,
as the human identity was to the apes.
Thus the end of this film with this image
of the star child
feels surprisingly, incredibly optimistic.
The image symbolizes mankind’s potential
to spiritually remake ourselves as something
more.
The final shot also affirms the theme of eternal
recurrence
in the film -- another Nietzschean concept
the idea that everything repeats over and
over.
In 2001, moments from the different stages
of evolution mirror each other
to show how little has changed in some ways
over time.
Then, at the end, sending the starchild back
to earth
after Bowman left earth for this long space
odyssey
represents the ultimate return.
Scholars have also written about how closely
the film
echoes the story of Homer’s epic The Odyssey.
Of course, “Odyssey” is right there in
the title.
Leonard F. Wheat has noted Dave’s last name
“Bowman”
could allude to Odysseus’ skill as an archer.
Many have also noticed that the single red
eye of Hal
brings to mind the Cyclops.
The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus’
voyage home to Ithaka.
Bowman’s journey seems to be an adventure
into the new and unknown --
but because it ends in his rebirth
as this higher form of consciousness
going back to earth,
perhaps Kubrick is implying this is a homecoming
--
that it’s a journey toward becoming more
ourselves,
what we were always meant to be.
Up until the ending sequence of 2001,
the story isn’t the most conventionally
told narrative,
but it is logical and causal,
straightforward enough to follow.
Then the film's final sequence is confusing,
abstract and symbolic.
This shift in the storytelling technique
signals the entering of a dimension
that is beyond Dave’s and our comprehension.
That’s why the last line of dialogue in
the film is
"Its origin and purpose still a total mystery."
We can’t fathom the intelligence or purpose
of these aliens,
and thus in the final sequence we can only
process
certain imagery and respond to it
in our personal, intuitive way.
Kubrick himself said, "2001 is a nonverbal
experience;
out of two hours and 19 minutes of film,
there are only a little less than 40 minutes
of dialogue.
I tried to create a visual experience,
one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing
and directly penetrates the subconscious
with an emotional and philosophic content.
I intended the film to be
an intensely subjective experience
that reaches the viewer at an inner level
of consciousness, just as music does."
So from these words we can gather
that it’s not so important to “get”
the ending
in the traditional way.
In Kubrick’s view, any interpretation of
the ending
is supplemental to the experience of it.
So if 2001: A Space Odyssey has confused you
but also emotionally or mentally affected
you,
then it's done its job.
Before we go, there’s also a lot to say
about
how the ending reflects on a major theme of
the film --
technology and its link to violence,
and how the monolith fits into all that --
but we kind of need a whole other video
to do that theme justice.
So stay tuned.
Hi guys, this is Susannah.
I'm really happy to be talking about Mubi
today
because I've actually been a subscriber for
years.
I love the streaming service.
Mubi is a treasure trove of films
that you won't discover anywhere else.
They curate exceptional movies from around
the globe
and every day a new film is added
and the oldest is taken away.
So in this world where it's very easy to spend
hours
debating what you should watch
and feel overwhelmed by all the choice,
Mubi is like having a really cool friend
with amazing taste in movies,
making it so much easier for you.
They feature hard-to-come-by masterpieces,
indie festival darlings,
influential arthouse and foreign films,
lesser known films by your favorite directors,
and more.
In April, they're doing a whole series on
French films
after the New Wave.
Plus you can even download the films to watch
offline,
and there are no ads, ever.
The point is, I can't recommend it highly
enough.
You can try Mubi out right now for free
for a whole month.
Just click the link in the description below.
