Released: 1968
Sci-fi, Drama
Starring: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, Ed Bishop
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Running Time: 141 minutes
The breakdown: A science fiction drama about alien intelligence, mankind, apes, and space travel. It's extremely difficult to sum this movie up in a few short sentences.
I have seen the beginning 20 minutes of this movie so many times I can't count. I've seen pieces of the middle and then the end a few times, without being able to even guess what the rest of the film's about. I had heard a LOT of things about the film, and how so many people liked it and that it's probably one of the best films ever, so I finally sat down and watched it, in its entirety last night.
I liked it. At first, I didn't really understand it, and it's certainly confusing and open to interpretation so I'll do my best to tell you about it.
The plot runs like this, and since this is an older film, I will discuss all of it, including the ending. So if you are saving yourself to watch this sometime - just stop reading now - SPOILER ALERT ahead!
The plot is in 4 "chapters" if you will. This is a very detailed synopsis to better explore the meaning of the film at the end.
The first is:
The Dawn of Man (title card)
A whole bunch of ape-like humans are shown sitting around doing ape stuff. They search for food (they eat herbs and shrubs at this point), they go to the watering hole, they pick ticks off each other, they sleep. On one occasion at the watering hole, they are confronted by another "tribe" of ape-like humans. They do not fight, they just get chased out by a lot of posturing and hooting and hollering. One of the apes gets killed by a leopard, since it had no way to defend itself. This "tribe" is pretty scared and huddle together nestled up against a cave-like rock for sleep. In the morning, they wake up to find a large black monolith in front of where they slept. The monolith creates a lot of stirring, jumping, screeching, and curiosity. They circle around it for a while and then one brave one touches it. The others follow. Soon after they find the monolith they go on to start the evolutionary process. One ape discovers a long bone from a dead animal can be used as a tool and a weapon. They begin killing other types of animals to eat them, becoming carnivores. They go back to the watering hole they were once chased away from and reclaim it by killing the leader of the other tribe. The triumphant ape throws the bone into the air, twirling end over end, and the bone becomes an orbiting space satellite in the distant future. (The space satellite was, in an early draft of the movie, supposed to be a series of nuclear-weapon satellites from various countries; making the shot a weapon-for-weapon trade. This was later changed and when I saw it, I just took the space ship looking thing to be a generic space ship showing how far mankind had evolved from the apes.)
This first section of the movie running about 30 minutes has no dialogue and few sounds. It does have a classical song playing over the dramatic sequences though.
Second:
No title card but some refer to it as TMA-1
A space plane carries a man, Dr. Floyd, to an orbiting space station above the Earth. We discover he's on his way to the moon. While there, he runs into some of his colleges who ask about a rumor they heard. Allegedly, on the moon station, there has been an epidemic that has knocked out any kind of communications for 10 days. Dr. Floyd is not at liberty to discuss matters he says and politely leaves his friends.
On the moon station Dr. Floyd has a meeting with the personnel who work there. He apologizes for the epidemic cover story and says they all have to keep what's really going on a secret for humanities sake. Why he's there is to investigate what's really going on - an artificially made artifact has been found deliberately buried 4 million years ago on the moon. They call it Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One (TMA-1).
Dr. Floyd rides with others, in a moonbus to the dig site. Once there, we see a black monolith identical to the one early on in the film. The humans act remarkably like the apes did once seeing it. They get close to it, apprehensively touch it and want to take a picture in front of it. As they are gathering around it, they are suddenly reacting to a very loud radio signal emitting from the monolith. (This sound is most likely only been activated after people [intelligent life - smart enough at least, to get to the moon] have touched it, or after sunlight hits it for the first time, being unburied by an intelligent race.)
Third:
Jupiter Mission (title card)
18 months later.
We see a huge space ship called Discovery One heading for Jupiter. There are 2 astronaut scientists awake on board - Dr. Poole and Dr. Bowman, and 3 others who are in a state of hibernation until they arrive at Jupiter. Then they are supposed to be woken up and to do research of some kind. Controlling the ship in almost every aspect is the artificial intelligence computer known as HAL 9000. HAL is always present everywhere, but is only seen as a red-light-looking eye in scenes where it's talking. The astronauts are watching a transmission from Earth during a meal. They were interviewed about the mission and about HAL previously. HAL has been programmed to be as human as possible with respect to emotions so it can better relate to the humans on board. Dr. Bowman has been asked if HAL has genuine emotions to which the Dr. replies, he appears to, but no one really knows. Even HAL is interviewed and shows enthusiasm and pride for the mission, as well as mentioning that HAL 9000 are basically perfect and have a 100% service record. HAL specifically mentions it is,"foolproof and incapable of error."
In the next important scene HAL begins questioning Dr. Bowman about the secrecy of their mission and what was really going on on the moon 18 months ago. While they are talking HAL interrupts himself to report of an imminent failure of an important antenna that links them to Earth. Dr. Bowman goes out into space in a pod vessel to replace the faulty technology and brings in the old one. They sit together and test the faulty unit, but find no errors with it. HAL tells the astronauts to put it back in to see if it really does fail, but mission control back home has to be consulted. Mission control agrees with HAL but says that their twin HAL on Earth indicates the ship's HAL is in error about the faulty part.
When the astronauts question HAL about the error, he says as with all previous issues with HAL computers, the error lies with humans, not the computers. The doctors are worried. The doctors hide themselves into a pod in the docking area and turn off all the audio so HAL cannot hear them. Between themselves they discuss HAL's behavior. They realize they both have bad feelings about him/it, but decide to follow his suggestion to put the "faulty" part back in until it fails. They also decide to disconnect HAL's brain so they can control the ship safely, if the part doesn't fail, meaning HAL really is in err. What they don't realize is that even though HAL can't hear them, he can see them talking through the window and can read lips.
Dr. Poole goes out into space in a pod to place the original part back into the antenna when HAL disconnects his air hose and pushes him out into space alone. HAL does this by controlling the pod Dr. Poole took out while Dr. Bowman is not looking on the monitors back in the main ship. Once Dr. Bowman realizes Dr. Poole is in serious trouble and/or dead, he suits up and goes out into another pod to rescue him, but he leaves his suit helmet behind accidentally. Dr. Bowman doesn't realize HAL is to blame. While Dr. Bowman is out of the ship, HAL terminates life support for the 3 scientists on board that are in hibernation. Once Dr. Bowman retrieves Dr. Pooles body he comes back to the door of the ship asking HAL to open the door. HAL refuses. HAL says that he knows what the astronaut is planning to do and the mission is too important for him to be deactivated. Dr. Bowman risks his life and manually opens the emergency door with the pod to get into the main ship, but has to leave Dr. Poole's body out in space as well as the destroyed pod. Dr. Bowman gets his helmet he left behind and heads straight for HAL 9000's memory core to deactivate him immediately. HAL first asks the doctor what his is doing, he tries to reassure the doctor he will be fine, he's safe to leave active. Then he begins pleading not to be terminated. HAL finally shows fear of deactivation, but the doctor continues. HAL's voice never waivers from monotone and is quite creepy throughout the whole scene. As the doctor is disconnecting his modules, the computer regresses to its initial programming memory. The song "Daisy Bell" which Dr. Bowman asks him to sing until the computer cannot finish and is completely deactivated.
Once the deactivation is complete, a pre-recorded video message appears on the screen from Dr. Floyd. He says they found an ancient artifact on the moon that hasn't done anything except for transmit a terribly powerful radio emission towards Jupiter. The last words spoken in the film is what the man says last. "it's (the artifact's) origin and purpose still, a total mystery."
Lastly:
Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite (title card)
The Discovery One arrives near Jupiter and Dr. Bowman is the only crew member to see it. He sees an identical black monolith orbiting around Jupiter and takes a pod out to investigate. As he approaches, he suddenly is in a tunnel of light (assuming he's travelling at light years now, far into deep space). He is visibly shaken and scared at what he sees. They show a strange, weird colored terrain of other unknown worlds and bizarre cosmic events. Then all of a sudden he is middle-aged in his spacesuit inside a mostly white Victorian era furnished room. He hears something and turns to see a figure sitting at a dinner table. He (middle-aged) sees himself in a mirror and realizes what we've already seen, he's middle aged, but still in his spacesuit. Then he turns to the figure at the dinner table and we see it's him again, but now in a robe and even older. The spacesuit version of him is gone. Lastly, the old doctor who has dropped a glass, shattering on the ground, looks towards the bed and sees himself now as an elderly weak man laying in bed. The version of him seated at the table is gone.
The elderly doctor looks up from his bed and sees the black monolith we've seen throughout the whole film at the foot of the bed. He reaches for it, but it's very hard for him since he's very very weak. Suddenly we see a human-like fetus contained in a glowing orb of light floating out in space over the Earth. The being turns to face Earth and the movie fades to black.
This last 20-30 minutes of the film is completely quiet except for some strange moaning/faint music sounds.
The meaning:
So, I'm trying to analyze movies more these days. Too often in the past I've been a passive movie watcher, just letting the movie come to me and ask other people what it meant, or hopefully, the movie would spell it out for me. Before I looked for help, I tried to figure it all out myself.
I guessed that the monolith was a physical representation of an idea. The idea stood there and waited to be discovered by the apes, and once they touched it, one realized how to make a weapon and a tool, making the human race begin evolution. Once I got to the moon monolith though, I was stumped. An idea for what? To travel to Jupiter, I guessed. Then at the end, that theory really fell apart as I had no idea at all. I also guessed that the monolith might have been God, but that didn't hold water for very long either.
So for all my trying to use my brain on this, I needed help from the experts. I went to the internet and found that a lot of experts had a lot of confusion and different ideas as well as to what the movie was about. Essentially, it's about evolution, that can be agreed upon. But if the opening space scene is from a bone to a space satellite, than that means, look how far we've evolved from apes to brilliant beings capable of space travel. If the opening space scene is viewed as bone (used as a weapon) to nuclear satellite (weapon) that means we haven't evolved very far at all because we are still learning to control others with weapons.
I researched what Arthur C. Clarke intended his book's meaning to be (written the same time as the script by himself and Kubrick.) The best I can summarize it - is that the monolith is certainly an artifact made by aliens smarter than us. It is like an item meant to push apes to begin the evolutionary process in the beginning, it's a marker left on the moon for any intelligent life (probably inhabiting Earth) to find and once it is, that means the life was smart enough to get that far, so the monolith sends its signal to Jupiter to trigger the intelligent life (humans) to want to go there; and finally it's a portal orbiting around Jupiter to make that intelligent life (us) reach the next level by making it that far. The monolith is an ancient alien tool, left behind for someone/something smart enough to find and be rewarded with the next evolutionary step up. Dr. Bowman at the end is rewarded from being the only being to discover the orbiting monolith and ages fast, dies, and then is reborn as a new and improved star-child super-human. I know there's a sequel, but I haven't got that far yet. I'm still trying to absorb and research all of this one first.
It's a really interesting plot. What I didn't like about it, was the pace of the film. I don't like Stanley Kubrick at all as a director. I think he's weird on purpose just for the sake of being weird and trying too hard to be enigmatic. I understand for this film that he was trying to show how vast and empty space was, how isolating and quiet it is, to be out there, all alone, I get that. But, the pace for the outer space scenes is very very slow. The only thing you hear often is Dr. Bowman's breathing in his suit. I know it's dangerous, I know it's a vacuum, I know, I know. I think it's debatable at least, as to how long some of those outer space slow shots should be. I guess, you just have to be in the right mood for that movie, and you have to have patience to sit through it. Outside of the slow pace, I really liked it, even though it's confusing and open to interpretation and it's dialogue-light, it's well worth watching.
If you've been like me and just never been able to sit through it, do it just once in your lifetime, I think everyone should see this movie, if nothing else, but to open your sense of imagination and to wonder what's out there in space and beyond. It's considered a classic by most and one of the best films of all time in a ton of people's opinions and now I understand why.
I easily give it 4 and 1/2 ticket stubs for it's mystery, imagination and great plot.
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