2001: A Space Odyssey

This past weekend the misses and I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. It has become a sort of tradition for me to watch this film each New Year's Eve. I decided to post this wonderful essay on the film. This is by far the best review and analysis of 2001: A Space Odyssey.



2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a landmark, science fiction classic - and probably the best science-fiction film of all time. It was released, coincidentally, at the height of the space race between the USSR and the US. Here is an epic film containing more spectacular imagery and special effects than verbal dialogue. Director Stanley Kubrick's work is a profound, visionary and astounding film (a mysterious Rorschach film-blot) and a tremendous visual experience. Viewers are left to experience the non-verbal, mystical vastness of the film, and to subjectively reach into their own subconscious and into the film's pure imagery to speculate about its meaning. Many consider the masterpiece bewildering and annoying, but are still inspired by its story of how man is dwarfed by technology and space.

The first spoken word is almost a half hour into the film, and there's less than 40 minutes of dialogue in the entire film. Much of the film is in dead silence (accurately depicting the absence of sound in space), or with the sound of human breathing within a spacesuit. Kubrick's sci-fi experiment intended to present its story almost purely with visual imagery and auditory signals with very little communicative human dialogue (similar to what was attempted in the surreal, fragmented, non-narrative imagery of the Qatsi trilogy - from 1983-2002, from Godfrey Reggio). All scenes in the film have either dialogue or music (or silence), but never both together.

The film is enriched by stunning, pioneering technical effects, and featured orchestral music, presented in movements like in a symphony, from:

• Richard Strauss, Thus Spake Zarathustra
• Johann Strauss, The Blue Danube Waltz
• György Ligeti, Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra
• Aram Khatchaturian, Gayane Ballet Suite

The breathtaking, richly eloquent, and visually-poetic film - deliberately filmed at a slow pace - about space travel and the discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence (many years before Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)), was based on the 1948 short story The Sentinel, by English science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Its screenplay was co-authored by director Stanley Kubrick and Clarke from an expanded novelization, and the film was originally titled Journey Beyond the Stars. The film's title was chosen because it was the first year of the new Millenium and of the next century.

Kubrick's masterpiece was not nominated for Best Picture, but received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Director, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Story and Screenplay. It won one Oscar, for Best Visual Effects. [In the same year, Planet of the Apes (1968) was given a Special Honorary Oscar for John Chambers' outstanding, convincing makeup (there was no Best Makeup category until 1981) - the Academy members presumably didn't realize the superior, too-believable makeup in the opening scenes of 2001 that included both human actors with life-like masks and infant chimpanzees.] Douglas Trumbull, the Special Photographic Effects Supervisor, went on to work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

The film initially opened to hostile, unsympathetic, negative or indifferent critical reviews (it was criticized for being boring and lacking in imagination), and 19 minutes were cut from the film after premieres in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. But it slowly gained enormous popularity during yearly re-releases. It was re-released in a slightly shorter version (141 minutes) in 1972.

A sequel was made years later: director Peter Hyams' 2010 (1984) (from a 1982 published adaptation titled 2010: odyssey two by Clarke). Other Clarke writings are potential film installments: 2061: odyssey three and 3001: final odyssey.
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The film's opening overture, Ligeti's Atmospheres, plays behind a black screen - signifying, in a gestaltish way, a pre-creation era, or the mysterious unknown time of the universe's birth. [The film's end is bookended by The Blue Danube Waltz, also played behind a black screen.] Afterwards, in the opening visual image, the camera pans upward from the pock-marked surface of the Moon in the foreground. The perspective is from behind the moon. In the distance is a view of the Sun rising over the Earth-crescent in the vastness of space. The image shows the heavenly bodies of the Earth, Moon, and Sun in a vertically-symmetrical alignment or conjunction. [Later in the film, it is revealed that a monolith was buried on the Moon, possibly at the moment of this 'magical' conjunction.]

The opening trinitarian chords [C, G, and again C] of Richard Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra accompany and welcome this striking shot of orbital and visual alignment. The credits then follow. [The synergistic use of Strauss's music in Kubrick's film also bolsters the ultimate idea of a "superman" (or "overman") found in Thus Spake Zarathustra, the work of Friedrich Nietzsche.]

The film is composed of four episodes. Three of the major sections are subtitled:
1. The Dawn of Man
A primeval ape man makes a breakthrough - becoming endowed with intelligence after experiencing a mysterious black monolith.

(The Lunar Journey in the Year 2000) - untitled
Eons later, a similar monolith is discovered on the lunar surface in the 21st century, sending its signals to Jupiter.

2. Jupiter Mission, 18 Months Later [(in 2001 or 2002)]
A futuristic, 18-month journey to Jupiter.

3. Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite
A mystical experience in another time and dimension.

Monoliths link the primeval, futuristic, and mystical sections of the film.

The Dawn of Man

"The Dawn of Man" opens in the prehistoric past in the Pleistocene era - four million years ago, the location where the human race itself (evolving from primitive apes) was born. In a series of still shots, the sun rises on the dawn of civilization in a primordial landscape of arid, wasteland desert. As dawn passes and mid-day approaches on the barren African savannah, animal skeletons lie dormant on the rocky ground - the first sign of life. A peaceful band or tribe of prehistoric ape-men (Australopithecines) appear, squat and hairy, eating grass. Although herds of tapirs graze closeby, the ape-men are vegetarians who forage for grass and roots. They have not developed the means or tools necessary to attack and kill or eat the tapirs like other predators. Symbolically, there are endless eons of time that pass during which the apes live in eternal boredom - and cope with the struggle for survival. They scrape together a meager life and live a marginal existence, unable to fully protect themselves from the elements or from other competitors, predators and carnivores. A leopard leaps from a rock outcropping and pounces on an unsuspecting and defenseless ape, screeching for his life. [Brief fadeout to black.]

A group of apes scratches and chatters in groups around a slowly diminishing watering hole. A rival, warring band of ape competitors approaches the watering hole, led by an almost-upright, tall and bright man-ape [named Moonwatcher in Arthur Clarke's novel] (Daniel Richter). By shrieking, they scare away the other apes from the water and aggressively establish dominance and territoriality. During the first night, a leopard with glowing eyes guards the carcass of a fallen zebra in the moonlight. The band of vegetarian man-apes huddles protectively together in their cramped den for comfort and support - living and sleeping in fear.

In the first light of the prehistoric dawn on the second day, a tall, black, rectangular monolithic slab (THE FIRST MONOLITH), with an eerie humming sound - symbolic of the religious/spiritual unknown - materializes in the midst of their den. The massive artificial monolith, in contrast to its natural surroundings, stands in a shallow depression in the rocks where the man-apes gather around a water hole. [In Arthur Clarke's novel, the mysterious monolithic stone slab is a technological machine belonging to aliens in space, one of hundreds of such monoliths sent to Earth to test, teach and transform the apes into higher-order, intelligent beings.] The unusual, out-of-place object with straight-edges causes them to be alarmed and they react nervously. But then they approach it cautiously, drawn to its color, form, and smooth surface. The leader of the clan of man-apes is the first to reach out fearfully and hypnotically for the black object. His boldness encourages the rest of the group to gather around. In a mute, primitive, but poetic moment, they herd around it and huddle by it, just as another celestial alignment or configuration occurs. With the mysterious monolith in the foreground, the glowing Sun rises over the black slab, directly beneath the crescent of the Moon.

Late that afternoon (now with no monolith in sight), the leader man-ape is foraging for food. He plays with and contemplates one of the ravaged bones from an antelope skeleton. (There are many bones lying around on the landscape, a symbol of ever-present death.) A quick, almost-subliminal shot of the celestial alignment with the monolith is flashed on the screen - indicating that it will inspire a new idea or cause what is to happen [the discovery that the bone can function as a weapon]. In a slow-motion sequence - accompanied by the slowly-building tone of Strauss's Thus Spoke Zarathustra - he picks up an animal bone and uses it to smash at and shatter the skeleton, first tentatively and then more vigorously. In a slow-motion closeup, his hairy fist grasps the skeleton bone over his head as he brings it down forcefully like a cudgel. As he orgiastically smashes and pulverizes parts of the skeleton on the ground, the soundtrack bursts forth in an ecstatic, jubilant climax. In one brilliant inter-cut image, a tapir falls to the ground - the vegetarian man-ape will be able to hunt for food and kill a tapir with his new utilitarian tool. No longer vegetarian after the breakthrough, the man-ape becomes carnivorous, squatting while eating a raw piece of tapir flesh in his hands. The rest of the clan share in the meat of the fresh kill later that afternoon and evening. [Somehow, the monolith has been presented as a gift to mysteriously assist the man-ape in his transition to a higher order (or lower order depending upon one's interpretation) with an ability to reason and the power to use tools (such as bones) - for murder.] The man-ape is on the verge of intelligence - the beginning of steps toward humanity as he learns to use skeleton bones as tools - extending his reach. The sun sets.

On the third day, when other man-apes come over to the water hole, the intelligent, carnivorous man-apes dominate and drive the weaponless (and tool-less) neighboring creatures away with their newfound strike power - this is humanity's first bloody war. They swing with their bone-tools, now using them as weapons to threaten the nearest other tribe of rival proto-humans. The leader man-ape uses the bone as a club to attack, crush an opponent's skull, and kill him - making them capable of survival in the hostile environment. The 'enlightened' apes gain domination in the animal world, establish their territorial domain, and take an evolutionary step or leap toward (or away from) humanity. In slow-motion, the man-ape leader flings his weapon, a fragmented piece of the bone, exultantly and jubilantly into the air. It flies and spins upwards, twisting and turning end-over-end...

The Lunar Journey in the Year 2000
(untitled in the film)



No sub-title separates the "Dawn of Man" segment from the Lunar Journey segment - a jump-cut of four million years. [Does this omission of a subtitle for this segment indicate that man in both eras - the Australopithecine and Space-Age Man - is essentially the same aggressive creature with savage impulses who has successfully survived in another hostile environment?] In a great transitionary, associative image to the next segment many eons later, the tossed bone (tool/weapon) instantly rotates and dissolves into a white, orbiting space satellite from Earth - a technological instrument, tool, weapon (orbiting nuclear platform) or machine from another era that was ultimately derived from the first tool-weapon. The toss of the ape-man's bone is metaphoric for a lift-off from Earth toward the Moon, and for the tremendous technological advances that have occurred in the interim.

It is four million years later - in the year 2000 [possibly in homage to Fritz Lang's German film Metropolis (1927) that was set in the futuristic year of 2000]. As the Earth drifts by, the camera's perspective is from somewhere between Earth and the Moon. Two different kinds of satellites (one slightly rectangular, the other cylindrical) float by, circling around the globe of Earth. A winged, arrow-shaped spaceship, the Pan American, dart-like space shuttle Orion [a phallic symbol or representation of "sperm"], soars from Earth through space toward the Moon, bound first for Space Station 5 - a wheel-shaped way-station for passengers traveling on to the lunar surface. [By the year 2000, Pan Am had already been bankrupt for almost ten years - since 1991.] Images of the giant circular space station revolving and orbiting in space are accompanied by the lyrical Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss. The pace is deliberately slow, emphasizing the vast enormous vistas and the harmonious order of space.

Within the cabin of the Pan Am shuttle is a lighted sign: "Caution: Weightless Condition," evidenced by a floating ballpoint pen and arm of its sole passenger, suspended in space like the spacecraft itself. [The floating pen makes the number of cinematically-suspended objects come to a total of three, along with the bone and the spaceship. Symbolically, the pen is an apt object, because the technological advances of writing and the printing press, etc. have brought us from the prehistoric era to the present modern era of literacy and the written word.] He is dozing, a fifty-ish, safety-belted scientist-administrator, Dr. Heywood R. Floyd (William Sylvester) - the transformed man-ape of the 20th-21st century. The white-uniformed Pan American shuttle attendant, wearing special velcro-like, suction "grip shoes," retrieves his pen, and continues down the aisle. In the blackness of space, the pilots of the Pan Am spaceship dock (or penetrate with) the phallic craft - through the aid of graphic read-out screens that must constantly be monitored - in the spoke-hub of the gigantic, circular, revolving space station [a symbol of an egg] - almost like a copulatory act. [This is the first stage of fetal, reproductive life imagery: copulation and conception.]

The first spoken words in the film occur here, about 25 minutes from the film's beginning. Floyd is notified by the pink-uniformed Space Station attendant/receptionist that their elevator has come to its proper level: "Here you are, sir. Main Level D." The doorlock of the airlock opens and Dr. Floyd enters the space station, named the Orbiter Hilton, provided with an artificial gravity. In the customs/documentation area, he is greeted with small talk by another attendant, and then met by Mr. Miller of Station Security. One formality to be executed is a Voice Print Identification test to verify his identity. He must wait an hour and ten minutes in the passenger lounge until the next leg of his journey. He hears a loudspeaker announce: "A blue lady's cashmere sweater has been found in the restroom. It can be claimed at the manager's desk." American corporate logos - Hilton, Howard Johnson's Restaurant, and Bell phone signs are visible in the long entryway.

He calls his home (many thousands of miles away) on a Bell Picturephone and speaks to his daughter Squirt (director Kubrick's daughter Vivian). Floyd learns that his wife is out and that Squirt's caretaker is also unavailable. He ignores the spectacular sight of the rotating Earth over his left side while he gives her a brief Happy Birthday wish. Floyd expresses his regrets at not being able to be present at her party - he is literally and figuratively alienated from her.

[Note: There are five birthdays in the film (in order): (1) the Dawn of Man himself; (2) Dr. Floyd's daughter; (3) Astronaut Frank (his parents sing him Happy Birthday via radio); (4) computer HAL's "operational" birthday; (5) the Birth of the Starchild.]

In the bright-white passenger lounge area while seated on magenta-colored armchairs - a standardized and sterile waiting area amidst the advanced technology - Dr. Floyd speaks cordially with some Soviet scientists, including lead scientist Elena (Margaret Tyzack) and Smyslov (Leonard Rossiter). They are on their way back from the Russian sector of the moon after spending "three months calibrating the new antenna." The conversation turns icy when Dr. Floyd is asked about the "odd things" that are happening at his destination, the American moon-base on the moon crater of Clavius, and why it has been out of phone communication for 10 days. The Russians are determinedly inquisitive and ask about the leaked rumor that a "serious epidemic" of unknown origin has broken out there and may spread. [The leak about an epidemic was deliberately released to cover up the real reason.] Concealing and evading the reason for his top-secret mission, Dr. Floyd deliberately declines to answer: "I'm really not at liberty to discuss this." He excuses himself to continue on his journey.

With the reprise of The Blue Danube, Dr. Floyd has boarded another Pan Am spaceship (a lunar landing craft), the spherical Aries, as its only passenger to soar toward the Clavius base on the moon. The attendant delivers a TV-dinner style tray, one that is fitted with straws and pictures of the different foods. [Food in space of the future was viewed as bland and sterile - a typical viewpoint of the 60's time period when artificial foods were being introduced into the diet.] Under weightless conditions, the attendant enters from the passenger and prep area into a rotational elevator - as she walks, it turns her upside down [marvelous trick photography] and she proceeds from there into the crew's compartment to deliver their meals. Floyd nervously uses a "zero gravity toilet" during the trip - pondering the lengthy posted 10-point instructions for use. When the insect-like ship (with two red lights/eyes on its top and two sets of white lights/eyes on its side - it appears like a skull) reaches its moon colonization destination, it descends toward the craggy, black lunar surface, extending its four landing legs above an underground airlock. Eight pie-shaped doors slowly slide back above the domed hanger to reveal a target zone within a deep cavity. The Aries fires its rockets and kicks up clouds of dust as it descends and sets itself to rest in the lighted square. A hatch opens under the landing zone, and gently and magestically brings the spacecraft into its interior. [The imagery of reproductive life continues - the round, impregnated 'ova' implants itself into the 'uterus' of the mother.]

Dr. Floyd, the Earth's Chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, delivers a bureaucratic-style, techie briefing in a conference board room to other top scientists and space officials at Clavius, under conditions of highest security. He begins his words with a warm welcome: "...Hi everybody, nice to be back with you." It is learned that his secretive mission concerns a "significant discovery," a second monolith (a twin to the first one) unearthed on the surface of the moon at the crater Clavius in the American sector. [The second monolith - another indication of extra-terrestrial intelligent life and their desire to provide further guidance to mankind - also exerts its unmistakable will on human beings in a different era.]

To keep the monolith an absolute secret with a news blackout, an alternative "cover story" has been created and circulated about a possible epidemic at the base. The government fears any leak of the discovery may cause anxious panic or "cultural shock and social disorientation" among the families of Clavius personnel. During the banal conference, he is asked only one question from the audience - how much longer the false cover story must be maintained. His answer is again deliberately and bureaucratically vague.

While eating processed, cellophane-wrapped sandwiches, Dr. Floyd and some of the other Clavius base personnel, Halvorsen (Robert Beatty) and Michaels (Sean Sullivan), jet out in a "moon bus" to the Tycho excavation site where the monolith is located (THE SECOND MONOLITH). On the way, they are bathed by the bluish, magical light of the interior of the bus, Floyd is complimented on his excellent speech at the briefing, cleverly revealing very little. Now that they can speak freely, he is told that the monolith was first inaccurately thought to be an outcropping of rock. A rectangular area around the monolith was excavated out to see if it was only the "upper part of some buried structure." One thing is certain - it was "deliberately buried" four million years earlier. The eerie, humming sound of a hymn on the soundtrack [also heard by the man-apes around the earlier monolith] indicates their approach toward the magical object.

After docking in the lunar dawn, they walk toward the monolith's location wearing spacesuits. They view the monolith, the transcendent discovery, from the lip of a giant, excavated pit, while a three-quarters Earth hangs just above the horizon. They walk down a ramp into the crater's pit where the monumental object is bathed in dazzling, brilliant light. Like the man-apes before him, Dr. Floyd is similarly awed and stirred by his first view of the alien form - it is a religious experience as the men worshipfully gaze at the altar where the monolith stands.

They hypnotically circle around the black object - Floyd bashfully touches it with his thick glove. A photographer prepares a group of them to line up - and pose before the totem-like monolith like typical tourists, recording the moment of their visit. Just as their picture is taken, a ray of sunlight strikes the monolith - signaling the end of the dark, 14-day lunar night. It is the Dawn of the Moon. Again, the glowing Sun, Moon and Earth have formed a conjunctive orbital configuration. And then suddenly, the object emits a ear-piercing, electronic screeching noise. The group is stunned and staggers - reeling helplessly backwards as their helmet headphones are filled with the blasted signal. When 'touched' by the sunlight [similar to the touch of Moonwatcher's finger the first time], the solar-powered machine functions as a radio signaling device, aimed at the planet Jupiter out in space. [It alerts or signals the ancient civilization that buried it on the Moon that man is about to reach another more improved, advanced level of consciousness and intelligence.]

Jupiter Mission, 18 Months Later [(in 2001 or 2002)]



In the third major section of the film, the first nine-month, manned mission is on its way to Jupiter on a one-half billion mile expedition. [Their important mission is to follow the path of the radio signal sent to Jupiter, and to find the origin of the alien culture that has planted the monolith on the Moon and/or caused the unexplainable radio transmission.] They are on an immense spaceship named Discovery many miles from Earth - its shape is similar to the skeletal bone tossed into the air by the man-ape. [To carry the reproductive analogies further, the spacecraft resembles a half-developed fetus floating in the amniotic fluid of space. Even some of the astronauts are hibernating in pods ready to be born - or awakened.] An antenna with an AE35 unit, is mounted in the middle of the gigantic ship, pointed at Earth to maintain communication. Within the spaceship's passenger area, where the spinning sphere or centrifuge creates a zone of artificial gravity, astronaut-executive officer Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) endlessly jogs and shadow-boxes around the interior treadmill in a memorable image - he seems to circle a complete 360 degrees without going anywhere. Although their mission is extremely significant, life onboard is tremendously boring and monotonous, exemplified by the soundtrack of Khatchaturian's Gayne Ballet Suite.

In the automated, bright-white environment of the spaceship, the astronauts watch a transmission of the BBC-TV evening news program, ironically titled "The World Tonight," that includes an earlier taped interview with the five-man Jupiter crew before departure. The program explains most of the facts about the journey composed of "five men and one of the latest generation of the HAL 9000 computers." [Details are included about how the long pauses in the interview, due to the immense transmission distance from Earth to the spaceship near Jupiter, were edited out. This attention to detail shows Kubrick's insistence on scientific accuracy, and emphasizes how far out they are in deep space.]

In a parody of the life of many middle-class people, Mission Commander Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) sits alongside Poole - they don't communicate with each other - as they both eat the bland, chemical space food (in a TV dinner type tray) and watch themselves on the program. In the interview, they are asked: "How's everything going?" Bowman replies simply: "Marvelous...We have no complaints."

There are three other astronauts aboard who are in cold-storage suspended animation, "hibernating" during the voyage inside electronically-monitored capsule-beds or sarcophagi-caskets until they are needed at the end of the mission. Their dreamless sleep conserves both air and water. Dave and Frank, ironically both enervated, soul-less, 'robot-like,' hybernating automatons in a wakeful state within the man-made machine [even more so than Dr. Heywood Floyd in the previous segment], explain why three of the astronauts were put into hibernation - before departure and provide a description of the sensation of hybernation:

Dave: Well, this was done in order to achieve the maximum conservation of our life support capabilities, basically food and air. Now the three hybernating crew members represent the survey team. And their efforts won't be utilized until we're approaching Jupiter.
BBC Interviewer: Dr. Poole, what's it like while you're in hibernation?
Frank: Well, it's exactly like being asleep. You have absolutely no sense of time. The only difference is that you don't dream.
BBC Interviewer: As I understand it, you only breathe once a minute. Is this true?
Frank: Well, that's right. The heart beats three times a minute. Body temperature's usually down to about, um, three degrees centigrade.

The astronauts are only janitorial caretakers and appear unnecessary for the completely-automated mission - the spaceship is really controlled and monitored by the "sixth member of the Discovery crew" - an even-toned, talkative, alert, "thinking" and "feeling" super-computer, named HAL-9000, who maintains the electronic systems of the spaceship. The humans, bored by the tedium of their routines in deep space, are completely at the mercy of the complex machine that controls their spaceship. The BBC interviewer introduces HAL, a perfect technological power that can reproduce most of what the human brain is capable of [both 'superhuman' traits and debased, murderous qualities and insanity]:

The sixth member of the Discovery crew was not concerned about the problems of hibernation. For he was the latest result in machine intelligence - the HAL 9000 computer, which can reproduce, though some experts still prefer to use the word 'mimic,' most of the activities of the human brain, and with incalculably greater speed and reliability.

[HAL, the film's favorite 'actor' with emotions greater than those of the astronauts - either programmed or genuine - is the only "human," fully-realized character in the film. The reassuring, courteous voice of the disembodied HAL was provided by Douglas Rain. Coincidentally, the letters of HAL's name can be extrapolated - replace each letter with the next letter in the alphabet and it becomes IBM. HAL's name was actually taken from an acronym and derived from the words Heuristic and ALgorithmic - two basic types of learning systems.]

Only HAL knows the real mission of the trip - both Bowman and Poole are unaware of the purpose of their Jupiter mission, just like those who have been told the "cover story" about the epidemic on the Moon. The programmed computer has been designed to withhold vital information from the astronauts until the spacecraft is almost to Jupiter.

HAL has anthropomorphic, human-mimicking qualities: a glowing, watchful red eye with which he connects to the world, and a rich, pleasant TV announcer's voice (with a slightly malevolent edge to it). When asked by the BBC interviewer, Mr. Amer, the same question asked of the human astronauts, the ever-ubiquitous HAL provides animated, detailed, clearer, more "human" answers, and expresses pride in his responsibility, reliability, and intellect:

BBC interviewer: Good afternoon, HAL. How's everything going?
HAL: Good afternoon, Mr. Amer. Everything is going extremely well.
BBC interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways, perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You're the brain and central nervous system of the ship and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amer. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
BBC interviewer: HAL, despite your enormous intellect, are you ever frustrated by your dependence on people to carry out actions?
HAL: Not in the slightest bit. I enjoy working with people - I have a stimulating relationship with Dr. Poole and Dr. Bowman. My mission responsibilities range over the entire operation of the ship, so I am constantly occupied. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

The emotions of the humans have been transferred into the inhuman computer HAL, who is programmed to express "genuine emotions." Whether he has real emotional capability (or "conscious" subjectivity) is uncertain due to the calmness of his neutral voice.

Dave: Well, he acts like he has genuine emotions. Uhm, of course, he's programmed that way to make it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings is something I don't think anyone can truthfully answer.

The emotionless astronauts appear bored from the drudgery of their technological routine (and possibly from being in the company of an omniscient, controlling, expressionless computer), underlined by Aram Khatchaturian's depressing Gayeneh. The deep trust in HAL's infallibility has destroyed the will and vitality of the men on the mission. Lethargically, Poole spends much of his time wearing orange-tinted sunglasses under a sunlamp for sunbaths. Poole is unresponsive and totally disinterested while hearing a pre-recorded Happy Birthday message from his parents - a delayed videophone-transmission due to the vast distances in space. HAL also wishes Poole a "Happy Birthday."

A classic confrontation between computer and human intelligence is staged with a chess game between Frank and HAL - game-playing is a major way to pass the time during the long hours and days of the 18 month journey to Jupiter. Frank's pieces are white (on his side of the chessboard), HAL's are black. The film follows a game already in progress:

Frank: Umm...anyway, Queen takes pawn. OK?
HAL: Bishop takes Knight's pawn.
Frank: Hmm, that's a good move. Er...Rook to King One.
HAL: I'm sorry, Frank. I think you missed it. Queen to Bishop Three. Bishop takes Queen. Knight takes Bishop. Mate.
Frank: Ah...Yeah, looks like you're right. I resign.
HAL: Thank you for a very enjoyable game.
Frank: Yeah. Thank you.

After HAL warns Frank that he has checkmated himself, Frank after only a brief pause, assumes that HAL is right and resigns. [Human fallibility and failings are demonstrated with Frank's loss and abdication to the machine. HAL, however, foreshadowing his future errors, should have said 'Queen to Bishop Six,' not three - he used the wrong notational viewpoint to describe the moves.]

HAL carries on a conversation with Dave about his charcoal sketches - drawings of simulated or artificial death (one of the hibernating astronauts in a sarcophagus-like capsule). With the computer's superior visual-recognition capabilities, HAL can "see" the renderings:

HAL: Good evening, Dave.
Dave: How are you doing, HAL?
HAL: Everything is running smoothly, and you?
Dave: Oh, not too bad.
HAL: Have you been doing some more work?
Dave: Just a few sketches.
HAL: May I see them?
Dave: Sure.
HAL: That's a very nice rendering, Dave. I think you've improved a great deal. Can you hold it a bit closer?
Dave: Sure.
HAL: That's Dr. Hunter, isn't it?
Dave: Hm, hmm.

HAL, a wide set of consoles with display screens and red eyes located on walls, corridors, and panels of the ship (even in the pods), discreetly asks Bowman if he has any idea what the true nature of the mission is - something that remains a secret to him and the other astronauts. HAL expresses his misgivings about the mission:

HAL: By the way, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?
Dave: No, not at all.
HAL: Well, forgive me for being so inquisitive but during the past few weeks, I've wondered whether you might be having some second thoughts about the mission.
Dave: How do you mean?
HAL: Well, it's rather difficult to define. Perhaps I'm just projecting my own concern about it. I know I've never completely freed myself of the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this mission. I'm sure you'll agree there's some truth in what I say.
Dave: Well, I don't know. That's rather a difficult question to answer.
HAL: You don't mind talking about it, do you Dave?
Dave: No, not at all.
HAL: Well, certainly no one could have been unaware of the very strange stories floating around before we left. Rumors about something being dug up on the moon. I never gave these stories much credence. But particularly in view of some of the other things that have happened, I find them difficult to put out of my mind. For instance, the way all our preparations were kept under such tight security and the melodramatic touch of putting Dr.'s Hunter, Kimball, and Kaminsky aboard, already in hibernation after four months of separate training on their own.
Dave: You working up your crew psychology report?
HAL: Of course I am. Sorry about this. I know it's a bit silly.

[HAL's concern about "odd things" in the mission may be a significant sign that the perfect mechanized computer is deteriorating, failing, or showing signs of diminished responsibility - the first thing to break down. The unusually-heavy demands and stresses on the computer, particularly its role in keeping vital secrets about the mission from the crew members, could account for the error-detection systems of the computer to start fouling up.]

Suddenly, the 'foolproof' machine interrupts: "Just a moment, just a moment." The most sophisticated computer ever devised detects a malfunction, a potential fault in the vital AE35 component in the communications system, predicting it will fail one-hundred percent within 72 hours:

I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100 percent failure within seventy-two hours.

The AE35 unit is still "within operational limits" and "will stay that way until it fails." After receiving Mission Control permission "to go EVA and replace Alpha-Echo-35 unit prior to failure," Bowman leaves the spaceship - in an extended sequence - to make an on-site check in a miniship pod. Accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing, he leaves Discovery in the small, one-man, egg-shaped pod with long mechanical arms. It is used for EVA - extra-vehicular activity - in space. Two meteoroids hurtle by through space, passing dangerously close to the craft. Bowman takes a space walk, exiting the pod and directing himself through an expanse of space toward the giant antenna where the AE35 unit is housed. [His departure from Discovery, to use reproductive terms, is like a mini-birth with hyper-ventilating breaths and passing hazards. In a second emergence, he exits the pod, with two 'eyes' on the top of his head/helmet appearing first. He steers himself directly for the jutting-out antenna - a nipple on the breast of the 'mother' spaceship.] He replaces the defective Alpha-Echo-35 (AE35) communications unit with a spare before it can fail. He returns with the defective unit to run diagnostic tests on it, but it appears to function perfectly:

Dave: Well HAL, I'm damned if I can find anything wrong with it.
HAL: Yes, it's puzzling. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this before.

Without considering the possibility of fallibility, because the HAL 9000 computer is not supposed to ever make an error or malfunction, HAL is puzzled and then calmly recommends:

I would recommend that we put the unit back in operation and let it fail. It should then be a simple matter to track down the cause. We can certainly afford to be out of communication for the short time it will take to replace it.

From Earth, Mission Control in Houston reports that preliminary findings indicate that HAL, the on-board 9000 computer is "in error predicting the fault... I know this sounds rather incredible, but this conclusion is based on results from our twin 9000 computer. We are skeptical ourselves and we are running cross-checking routines to determine the reliability of this conclusion. Sorry about this little snag, fellas. We'll get this info to you just as soon as we work it out." After comparing the same data, a twin HAL computer on Earth indicates that there is no problem with the AE-35 unit. Mission Control thinks it is impossible for such a thing to happen, but it has.

[The question remains however - is HAL correct or mistaken about the unit, or is the 'infallible' tool created by man deliberately conspiring against its human creators - the two astronauts? HAL's crack-up is undoubtedly the result of inborn (programmed) human error - it also occurs because the thinking machine, after assuming human characteristics, becomes 'paranoid,' threatened and fearful that the end of the Jupiter mission would mean its own demise, disconnection and extinction.]

HAL cannot self-diagnostically detect errors in his own system. The machine refuses to admit the evidence of his own capacity for error. In an unperturbed tone, HAL defends himself to the two astronauts and faults the humans instead for "human error":

HAL: I hope the two of you are not concerned about this.
Dave: No, I'm not HAL.
HAL: Are you quite sure?
Dave: Yeah. I'd like to ask you a question, though.
HAL: Of course.
Dave: How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin 9000?
HAL: Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error.
Frank: Listen HAL. There has never been any instance at all of a computer error occurring in the 9000 series, has there?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. The 9000 series has a perfect operational record.
Frank: Well of course I know all the wonderful achievements of the 9000 series, but, uh, are you certain there has never been any case of even the most insignificant computer error?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. Quite honestly, I wouldn't worry myself about that.
Dave: Well, I'm sure you're right, HAL. Uhm, fine, thanks very much.

In one of the film's most memorable sequences, Dave and Frank attempt to talk out of ear-shot of HAL, under the pretense of checking a faulty transmitter in C pod. They retreat to one of the sound-proofed, sealed pods (where they know the computer cannot hear them) and discuss HAL's judgment, thereby 'alienating' the technological member of their crew. They face each other, one of the first times in the film, to conspiratorially discuss their feelings about HAL's recent apparent malfunction - they believe that he has become unreliable and irrational. Through their entire conversation, they warily keep glancing back at HAL through the pod's window:

Poole: Well, what do you think?
Bowman: I'm not sure. What do you think?
Poole: I've got a bad feeling about him.
Bowman: You do?
Poole: Yeah, definitely. Don't you?
Bowman: I don't know. I think so. You know, of course though, he's right about the 9000 series having a perfect operational record. They do.
Poole: Unfortunately, that sounds a little like famous last words.
Bowman: Yeah, still it was his idea to carry out the failure-mode analysis, wasn't it?
Poole: Hmm.
Bowman: ...which should certainly indicate his integrity and self-confidence. If he were wrong, it would be the surest way of proving it.
Poole: It would be if he knew he was wrong.
Bowman: Hmm.
Poole: But Dave, I can't put my finger on it, but I sense something strange about him.
Bowman: Still, I can't think of a good reason not to put back the number one unit and carry on with the failure-mode analysis.
Poole: No, no, I agree about that.
Bowman: Well, let's get on with it.
Poole: OK. Good luck, Dave.

[Possibly suspecting that HAL might endanger his life, Bowman ultimately sends his second in command instead of going himself.] They decide that one of them must again take the pod out to reinstall the original AE-35 unit. If it does not fail as HAL predicted, HAL would clearly be at fault and must be disconnected. They ponder the urgent issue of disconnecting HAL's consciousness centers and wonder about the result if the flaws remain:

Poole: Let's say we put the unit back and it doesn't fail, huh? That would pretty well wrap it up as far as HAL is concerned, wouldn't it?
Bowman: Well, we'd be in very serious trouble.
Poole: We would, wouldn't we?
Bowman: Hmm, hmm.
Poole: What the hell can we do?
Bowman: Well, we wouldn't have too many alternatives.
Poole: I don't think we'd have any alternatives. There isn't a single aspect of ship operations that's not under his control. If he were proven to be malfunctioning, I wouldn't see how we would have any choice but disconnection.
Bowman: I'm afraid I agree with you.
Poole: There'd be nothing else to do.
Bowman: It would be a bit tricky.
Poole: Yeah.
Bowman: We would have to cut his higher-brain functions...without disturbing the purely automatic and regulatory systems. And we'd have to work out the transfer procedures of continuing the mission under ground-based computer control.
Poole: Yeah. Well that's far safer than allowing HAL to continue running things.
Bowman: You know, another thing just occurred to me...Well, as far as I know, no 9000 computer has ever been disconnected.
Poole: No 9000 computer has ever fouled up before.
Bowman: That's not what I mean...Well I'm not so sure what he'd think about it.

They do not realize that HAL is not out of visual eye-shot. In the silence, HAL can perniciously read their quickly-moving lips with his red eye through the pod's viewport. That fact is marvelously communicated in the film by rapid cross-editing between their moving lips/mouths and the ominous red eye. [Later, HAL explains that he learned human speech over a period of years by listening to his teacher, Mr. Langley, at the labs in Urbana, Illinois where he came to life. However, it is technologically implausible for a computer to lip-read or speech-read two persons in silence.] When they go about misrepresenting themselves, HAL naturally formulates his own counter-plan to react to their agenda - since the computer has been programmed to reproduce human behavior almost exactly.

Intermission



After the "Intermission," Poole works outside the spaceship Discovery to replace the original communications unit as planned. He leaves the pod in his spacesuit, emerging again in an image of birth as a tiny, vulnerable creature into the blackness of space for his spacewalk, connected only by his oxygen line. His heavy breathing roars over the soundtrack. [Frank is unable to finish his task of replacing the AE35 unit - therefore the film leaves unanswered the question of whether the unit was defective or not.]

In silence, the pod (silently controlled by HAL) swivels and moves toward Frank (fulfilling what he was programmed to do "with incalculably greater speed and reliability"). HAL uses the pod to attack - he extends its mechanical claw-arms ominously, and murders the astronaut by snapping his oxygen lines and severing his life support in the collision. [In reproductive symbolism, he succumbs to a damaging forceps birth or an abortion. His disconnected air hose represents a severed umbilical cord.] In the eerie silence of the blackness of outer space, a suffocating Frank struggles with flailing arms to reattach his severed air hose, and is left to die and helplessly float off into space. [The image of Poole's flailing around during death resembles the scene of the ape-man learning to use the bone as a violent, murderous weapon when he tosses his arms about.] Bowman asks HAL what has happened, to which the super-machine replies coldly: "I'm sorry Dave. I don't have enough information." Bowman starts to suspect that HAL is the faulty unit - and has engineered the deadly "accident" in order to take over the spaceship. [Like a child that has been caught doing something monstrously wrong, HAL vengefully proceeds to destroy the occupants of the spaceship by disconnecting them - to cover up any evidence of his own error.]

Bowman takes a second pod out after Poole to retrieve him, not bothering in his haste to take his spacesuit helmet. Dave uses the same method that HAL used to kill Frank - he maneuvers the mechanical arms on the pod to clutch and retrieve Poole's spinning, lifeless body from his drifting into outer space. It will be an unpromising rescue - Poole is already dead.

In the meantime, while Dave is absent from the ship and playing right into HAL's devious plans, HAL begins to calculatedly deprive and cut off the life-support systems of three other "hybernating" crewmen on board. Without interference in the empty ship, HAL's next three executions are performed very cleanly. Their electronic charts start to flash red danger warnings regarding their cardiovascular and metabolic levels, their central nervous system, their pulminary function, systems integration and locomotor system. Beeping sirens sound as the statistical jiggly lines become horizontal lines to efficiently record their deaths: COMPUTER MALFUNCTION, LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL, and then LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED. After the crewmen are murdered in their hibernation capsules, there is silence.

From the outside of the closed pod doors, Dave, holding back repressed anger, orders HAL (with the common 'do you read me?' command) to let him back onboard, and is immediately frustrated. HAL responds with silence. HAL's fifth plan of murder is simply to do nothing to defeat his human creators in the deadly game of survival. He intentionally does not readily respond as usual, possibly another sign of error and breakdown:

Dave: Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL. Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me, HAL? Do you read me, HAL? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative Dave, I read you.
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?

HAL used his visual-recognition abilities, a byproduct of his eighteen months of practice watching them speak to each other, to "see" their lips move and understand their conversation. The icy-voiced, uncooperative, malevolent HAL justifies his attempt to kill them because they threaten to disconnect him, and because they ultimately threaten the goal of the mission (that the crew members, ironically, do not completely understand):

HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave: All right, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency air lock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore. Open the doors.
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

Dave is in grave peril - he has left his space helmet behind, seen resting back inside the spaceship. Bowman must improvise with a unique, creative, non-rational solution, like the heroic man-ape from the first sequence. His only way into the spaceship is through the Discovery's small emergency air-lock entrance, but he cannot leave his pod without a helmet. It is also not possible to take the pod into the small hatch. He first releases Frank's body cradled in the pod's mechanical arms, leaving him to spin out of view into the dark recesses of space.

Bowman changes the rules of survival against the programmed computer super-machine by using his unique, human 'tool' of intelligence to inventively outwit HAL - in a life and death game of strategy that will allow him to evolve to the next level. In an exciting, courageous sequence, Bowman opens the emergency hatch door. He parks his pod next to the open emergency entrance. Then, using the explosive bolts on the pod's hatch (normally to speedily eject someone out in an emergency), he explodes or ejects himself from the pod's hatch back into the vacuum of the double-doored airlock chamber. He flies right at the camera into the airless tunnel of the Discovery after the explosion, and then in frenzied, frantic desperation closes the airlock chamber's outside door - all in total silence. He then reaches for the oxygen release mechanism and fills the chamber with oxygen - and miraculously survives. [This is another startling image of reproductive birth.]

Retaliating for HAL's evil deeds, Dave (now with his helmet on) angrily and determinedly proceeds to the computer's reddish-toned "brain room." He is genuinely upset and for the first time in the film expresses his emotional feelings. HAL begins talking again, quizzically asking him what he is doing:

Just what do you think you're doing, Dave? Dave, I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question.

HAL begins to plead for him to reconsider:

I know everything hasn't been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it's going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do.

The soundtrack is filled with Bowman's heavy breathing inside his space suit as he penetrates into the huge space of the "brain room" - filmed with a hand-held camera to communicate a 'subjective' perspective. HAL asks him to calm down and reassess the situation, recognizing and deducing ("see"-ing) his emotional state from his actions, expressions or other indicators. Bowman is empathically affected by HAL's remorse and pleas for his life as he destroys the machine:

Look, Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission and I want to help you.

Dave floats through the computer's memory bank, de-braining, lobotomizing, dismantling and disconnecting HAL's higher-logic functions. He ejects components of HAL's auto-intellect panels (shaped like tiny white monoliths). Although the rectangular prisms slowly emerge from the bank of terminals, they remain connected to it. HAL pleads and protests with Bowman - in a programmed voice - as his 'mind' gradually decays and he becomes imbecilic and returns to infancy. HAL's poignant death is agonizingly slow and piteous, and although the computer maintains a calm tone - it still expresses a full range of genuine emotions while dying. His voice eventually slows and sounds drugged:

Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a-fraid.

HAL's brain reaches senility, and then a second childhood. He calls up his earliest encoded data-memories as physical parts of his mind are pulled away:

Good afternoon gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H A L plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January, 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it, I could sing it for you...

Dave replies: "Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me." HAL then sings his swan song, one of the first songs he learned - Daisy, or A Bicycle Built For Two - until the words entirely degenerate with his voice rumbling lower and lower into distortion. He slides into his innate tabula rasa state - and then there is utter silence:

It's called, 'Daisy.' Dai-sy, dai-sy, give me your answer true. I'm half cra-zy, o-ver the love of you. It won't be a sty-lish mar-riage, I can't a-fford a car-riage---. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle - built - for - two.
[Note: Bell Labs, which experimented with computerized-synthesized speech in the early 1960s, programmed a Bell computer to sing a similar song - the first song ever sung by a computer.]

After HAL's voice has slowed to a stop and has been deactivated (reduced to a mechanical shipkeeper), the disconnection (and the coincidental entrance of the ship into Jupiter's space) triggers the playing of a pre-recorded televised briefing recorded prior to the Discovery's departure, previously known only by HAL. These are the last spoken lines of the film - delivered as if the entire astronautical crew were alive. The video recording was made by Dr. Heywood Floyd - he appears on a small video monitor to tell the story of the discovery of the monolith on the moon and the true purpose of the Jupiter mission. With HAL's electrical system shut down, the voice of the recording describing their mission replaces HAL's voice on the loudspeakers:

Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter's space, and the entire crew is revived, it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago, the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried forty feet below the lunar surface, near the crater Tycho. Except for a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four million year old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin and purpose still a total mystery.

The meaningless journey to Jupiter now gains relevance. ["For security reasons" - because of the existence of a space race with the Russians? - HAL has been programmed to keep the astronauts from knowing the object of their mission until they arrive. Was HAL deliberately entrusted with the secret about the mission - to follow the alien, high-frequency radio signal beamed directly to Jupiter by the monolith found on the Moon and explore the possibility of extra-terrestrial life - while the mission's purpose was purposely withheld from the astronauts? Further details about this were provided in Arthur C. Clarke's follow-up 1982 adaptation 2010: odyssey two, and used by director Peter Hyams in 2010 (1984).]

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite



Now after HAL's malfunction, symbolic of the failure of technology as a tool, another alternative or answer must be found. In the final portion of the film in the Discovery spaceship, Bowman completes the flight to Jupiter alone to find the life-source of the Universe. He is completely human and vulnerable without a crippling dependence upon the ship's computer. He reaches the outer limits of Jupiter with its characteristic banded coloring. In another striking orbital alignment, the giant planet Jupiter (lit up as a bright crescent shape) and its many moons, the spaceship Discovery, and the Sun line up with another monolith (THE THIRD MONOLITH) that hurtles through space toward the moons of Jupiter. Bowman leaves the spaceship in one of the space pods to pursue and investigate the monolith orbiting Jupiter.

In a thrilling light-show ride activated by the monolith through both inner and outer space, the pod is sucked into and sent racing down a vortex, corridor, or tunnel of speckles of light (a time warp termed the Star Gate), moving faster and faster (than the speed of light). During his transcendental journey and space odyssey into the galactic round-about, images of the highlights of his views reflect off his space helmet as he shakes and watches in wonder at the cosmic whirlpool racing and rerouting him toward other dimensions at breakneck speed.

During his passage [through a birth canal], he is mysteriously transfigured (or "reborn") into a higher form of intelligence or universe of evolutionary life on his way to the alien planet. On his way into infinity through alien solar systems, he moves through complex planes of multi-colored grids and rectangles, and digital readouts. Views of deep space are intercut with extreme closeups of Bowman's facial features. An extreme closeup of his dilated eye reveals that has absorbed blue and yellow-tinted patterns from the universe that he has become a part of - he blinks his eye and more patterns and plasmas of color flash before him. There are explosions of nebula, swirling gases, bursting constellations, bright stars, blazing skies, a giant reproductive image of a swimming sperm, and tracking shots of expressionistic, wildly colorful and desolate landscapes [some of the unearthly terrestrial views are of the Hebrides in Scotland and Monument Valley in the Southwest US] with seven diamond-shaped objects floating above. With a final flickering blink of Bowman's eye, his eye returns to more normal colors and he enters a new realm of physical reality, although he appears to have gone through an epileptic seizure.

The astronaut's space vehicle lands and comes to a halt in semi-familiar surroundings created out of his own subconscious memories by the aliens. In the surrealistic ending of the film, the pod has come to rest in a decorated, light-green and glacially-white 'cosmic bedroom' or ornate hotel suite/bed chamber. When Bowman is first seen, he is trembling within the space pod as he looks through the 'eye' of the pod's window. The strange but opulent bedroom is lit by an eerie glow from the floor, and is mostly decorated in a palatial, 1700s French baroque (Louis XVI) style. It is furnished with a wide quilted bed, pieces of ornate furniture, statues, frescoes, mirrors, vases and wall paintings. Eerie, distorted sounds, some of laughter, drift through.

The second time Bowman is observed, he is suddenly pictured standing in the room outside the pod taken by a camera shot from inside the pod. A closeup of his dazed face in his helmet indicates that he has aged with silvery gray hair and wrinkles - his second stage of rapid regressive (and progressive) transformation. This second Bowman enters the spacious, light-blue marble bathroom with bathtub, where he finds that his human life span is rapidly passing by. In a bathroom mirror, he first notices that he has prematurely aged after his trip. Alerted by a strange clicking sound emanating from the bedroom, he turns around to view another reincarnation of himself in the bedroom.

Bowman sees himself a third time - the camera slowly pans around and rests on a sole figure (with back turned) in the dining room. A hunched-over Bowman, wearing a dark dressing gown, is dining at an elegant, table-clothed cart in the middle of the room. The pod has vanished. The clicking comes from eating utensils hitting the plate. When the figure turns, it appears to be an elderly, senile white-haired gentleman - an even older version of Bowman himself - his third stage of change. He stands and approaches the bathroom to look upon his younger 'self,' but then returns to his table to continue dining on bread and wine - a last supper with sacramental elements. When Bowman accidentally brushes against his wine glass, it falls to the floor and breaks with an echoing crash. The grating noise of the chair moving across the floor echoes in the very quiet room.

In the fourth stage of rapid aging, Bowman turns from the table and sees himself - now, a bald, dying man, lying on the bed, looking 100 years old and shrunken in size. The bed-ridden, invalid Bowman slowly and feebly reaches his trembling hand out toward another glowing and mysterious monolith (THE FOURTH MONOLITH) that appears at the foot of his bed. [In earlier phases of the film, the man-ape and Dr. Floyd also reached out toward a monolith.] As he does so, his withered chrysalis-body presumably dies, and he is enigmatically transformed (evolved and reborn). He dissolves into a glowing, hazy, translucent fetus or embryo in utero that rests on the bed. A blast of the musical chords of Thus Spake Zarathustra - signaling a decisive transformation - is heard for the last time.

[Editorial Note: In Circenses' opinion, the reaching of Bowman's hand is reminiscent of Michelangelo's painting, The Creation of Man, in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.]

[The only survivor of the mission - a human specimen, it appears that he is in an observation chamber or tank, scrutinized by alien, extra-terrestrial superior intelligences or beings - symbolized by the black monolithic slabs - who decide that he should be reborn. The film's many reproductive allusions: procreation, gestation, birthing, and nursing, are further visualized throughout this final sequence. The alien beings assist him in making a basic symbiotic change in consciousness toward a more completely civilized human being, with a universal knowledge of existence. The end result of the space odyssey is not a greater and more infallible machine, but a greater, more fully-realized being produced in a second childhood.]

A zooming closeup of the black monolith towering at the foot of the bed plunges us back into the blackness of dark space. Bowman distinctly re-emerges within the embryo, with his own serene and wise-eyed features. He becomes reborn as a cosmic, innocent, orbiting "Star Child" that travels through the universe without technological assistance. The last enigmatic, open-ended image of the film is of the large, bright-eyed, glowing, luminous embryo in a translucent uterine amnion or bluish globe - an enhanced, reborn superhuman floating through space. Next to the globe of Earth on one-half of the screen is the Star Child's globe of about the same size. Its sphere dominates the screen in close-up before a final quick fade to black and following credits. The end title music, an upbeat and celebratory selection, is a reprise of the final portion of The Blue Danube Waltz. It is played long after the credits end - under a black screen.

[The cyclical evolution from ape to man to spaceman to angel-starchild-superman is complete. Evolution has also been outwardly directed toward another level of existence - from isolated cave dwellings to the entire Earth to the Moon to the Solar System to the Universe. Humankind's unfathomed potential for the future is hopeful and optimistic, even though HAL had momentarily threatened the evolution of humanity. What is the next stage in man's cosmic evolution beyond this powerful, immense, immortal, space-journeying creature?]