![]() In the crater Clavius, humans excavate a black monolith, but they try to keep its discovery a secret. We transition from prehistoric times to the space age where astronauts have made it to the moon and beyond. Eventually, they realize they can not only conquer the fauna around them, but also other man-apes. This leads to the iconic scene where the man-ape, Moon Watcher, sees the bony remains of a pig and realizes that he can become a predator, like the leopard that killed it. The monolith seems to consider them worthy of evolutionary advancement, so it showers them with a mysterious energy. The monolith is studying them, assessing their intelligence. The man-apes go about their ape business until they spot a black monolith appear on the desiccated land. The movie opens on a barren landscape inhabited by man-apes. Though my thoughts on the film are not complete (what analysis of an ambiguous film ever is?) I became partial to the idea that Hal, as well as the crew he killed, were the victims of a cold, albeit guided, evolutionary process. Thus I looked to the book as if it were akin to a walkthrough. Still, both versions, developed simultaneously, are so inextricably linked that it’s difficult not to read Clarke’s words in Kubrick’s imagery. Most interesting was the hint cynicism of the story, though it’s not detected as easily in the film as it is in the book. When I finally hunkered down and watched it, I found the film intriguing - even hypnotizing. To do so seemed like an eye-wrenching test of my patience. And when the network showed the occasional trailer showcasing a man-ape triumphantly tossing a bone in the air, along with images of shuttles and cylindrical spaceships moving glacially to the The Blue Danube, it never occurred to me to watch such an unusually slow-paced film. Sure I was exposed to campy 50s and 60s sci-fi on TCM, but they didn’t demand much of my attention. Clarke’s novel of the same name, to begin building an understanding of the science fiction genre, which I admittedly know little about. ![]() ![]() I had decided to delve into the film, and Arthur C. Bowman climbs into the ship’s “nervous system,” and despite the monotone pleas of his shipmate, he carefully, earnestly, disconnects Hal.Įven though I didn’t find Stanley Kubrick’s sci fi flick from 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey (which turns 50 this year), demonstratively emotive, Hal’s disconnection made me feel sorry for the computer and a little bitter toward the victor, and it left me to wonder - what was the larger meaning behind what happened? The advanced, and conscious, 9000 computer Hal has killed every crew member but Bowman, but has failed to lock out the one survivor. Most science fiction fans are familiar with this famous scene: astronaut Dave Bowman propels himself into an emergency chamber to board his ship, Discovery One. ![]()
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