No other movie, as far as I know, has ever been ambitious enough to cover the amount of time covered in 2001: A Space Odyssey. We begin with an overture that, like Lawrence of Arabia a few years before, is used in a meaningful way and establishes a sense of origin. It actually seems to signal pre-creation, though that is up to debate. We then move to "THE DAWN OF MAN." After "one of the most mind-blowing jump cuts ever conceived" (one of the few of such audacious DVD case claims that is actually true¹), we jump to a space station in the future. I would also say (though this, too, is subject to opinion) that no other movie's ending has matched the greatness of 2001's, though many have certainly aimed high. The only word I can think of that comes close to describing 2001 accurately is sublime. That is not to say that it is for everyone. I think the love-it-or-hate-it term is overused, often inaccurately, but this really is a film that you either find amazing or tedious, and a lot of it has to do with how much you appreciate classical music, beautiful images, and disparate yet appropriate combinations of the two. The rest of it has to do with how much you are willing not to understand.

At its core, this is a film about progress. Specifically, it is about the evolution of man: where we have come from and where we might go. Of course, technology plays an enormous role in all of this as well. In the end, though, it is no longer a necessity to our race. You'll have to see to believe.

The opening images of the film are of landscape. After a minute, we see some bones, then our very first ancestors. After a few segments of their everyday life, something strange happens. The monkeys wake up with a monolith in front of them. This object has become one of cinema's single most celebrated, debated, rejected, pondered and all-around controversial items (and it is not the only such controversial instance in this film). It is a clearly unnatural black slab of metal standing upright with perfectly right angles all around. The monkeys, who have as of yet not invented even the first primitive technology, are confounded to the point of fear. They surround it while jumping and yelling, angry it seems, until one of them musters the courage to touch it. At this point, everything changes. The rest of the monkeys come to touch it and almost immediately seem to idolize it. Then, in one of the film's numerous astonishing images, we move to the monkeys' point-of-view, looking straight up the monolith, and see that it is pointing directly at the sun and the moon. From here, we understand how truly amazing it is that we have come so far, to think that we would one day reach the moon from such crude origins. Soon after this incident, technological advancement begins in a scene that is both thrilling and unsettling. And it is no subtle detail that technology's first two uses are violent. Though the vast majority of the film takes place in space in the future (or what was the future when the film was made), this opening act is vital. It forms a foundation on which the rest of the film is built and to which our space-age years are compared.

We then make the jump to space. The first space scene is accompanied by what is one of the film's most important elements: its music. Like Kubrick's other science fiction movie, A Clockwork Orange, 2001 has an amazing classical music soundtrack, even beyond its legendary use of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra opening. The music is beautiful on its own, but it is also used perfectly. We have quite a few scenes of spacecrafts docking, space stations floating, and other minor happenings of our technologies. The music in each of these scenes brings out their beauty and delicacy. The music's presence itself also reminds us that some of man's best achievements, such as music, are not merely tools but are ends in themselves. Indeed, much of the film's joy comes from simply viewing the on-screen images for what they are and listening to the music that accompanies them. In fact, if you cannot appreciate these scenes for their simplicity (not everyone can), you will tire of this movie rather quickly. Kubrick purposefully allows these scenes to linger for much longer than what is needed for the plot to progress.

Through a series of events which include another monolith, a crew ends up on a mission to Jupiter, along with HAL 9000, an all-powerful computer that speaks with a creepily placid human voice and that will play an important role in the plot as well as the film's interest in progress. Without giving anything away, all I can say is that there is no way to prepare yourself for where we eventually arrive, or for what happens when we get there. It is a fascinating sequence which, like the monolith, is also one of cinema's most celebrated and debated scenes, and it is followed by one final image that will leave you speechless.

Few directors would have been brave enough to attempt what this film does in its ending, its scope, and its entirety, and among them, Kubrick is the only one who could have done it as well as he did. As I said, there has been much debate over several aspects of this movie. The monolith, however, seems to be the one that really turns people on or off. From its first appearance, it seems to be a catalyst that starts our race's technological progress. Obviously in the real world, though, we began this progression without, presumably, any sort of alien catalyst. So, there are two questions: Where did it come from (plot-wise), and what purpose does it serve (thematically)?

The former question is easy: we do not know where it came from. The film provides no explanation because no explanation could be satisfying and because it is much more effective to leave it as an unknown. This way it haunts us. It is much more interesting to have something to ponder than to have a (likely absurd) explanation spelled out for us. All that matters is that it came from somewhere else.

The second question is more difficult. What purpose does it serve? In real life, we've made it to the moon without a monolith's nudge, so why is it necessary in 2001? There are several ways to understand the monolith in this light. First of all, it could be taken simply as a literal fictional object, pretty much making the movie into an old-fashioned alien film (not as ridiculous a possibility as it might sound). This view would make 2001 take place in an alternate universe in which some intelligent beings did, in fact, provide the monolith to help a human race go "BEYOND THE INFINITE."

There are two other ways of looking at it. The monolith could actually stand for something, a view that is close to, though not synonymous with, the need to explain its origin. In this case, it would stand for man's imagination, or creativity. This still warrants no origin-explanation, so it is therefore just as interesting a possibility because we don't know where in our minds first came the need to technologically progress. Doesn't it seem plausible that we might have kept things simple for eternity? The monolith forefronts this question, representing our sudden inexplicable desire to progress, just as the monolith's presence is sudden and inexplicable.

Finally, the monoliths (there are three of them in the movie), can be viewed simply as milestones placed by Kubrick upon our technological advancement. The first, as I said, comes just before tools, but I don't want to give away the locations of the other two. Maybe they are just Kubrick's own way of bookmarking what he sees as the three basic points in our progress as a race. In the end, though, there's no way to definitively say, and that's probably for the best.

2001 is a film that I feel passionately about. It is arguably the most imaginative film ever made, and some would consider it the best. It's a movie that you have to accept for the sake of its own beauty. Only then will you be able to consider its often enormous thematic concerns. Otherwise, you'll probably turn it off after an hour, maybe less. Some people want more story, less stunning imagery and music. I don't understand that.