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Review
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A strange black obelisk appears one day before a tribe of
primitive cavemen. Through some mysterious process, the
obelisk stimulates imagination or creativity, and man
invents tools. Millions of years later, the same obelisk
is found on the moon. Scientists interpret it as evidence
of intelligent life forms. When a signal is intercepted,
they trace it to a particular star system and arrange an
expedition to visit the source. The rest of the movie
traces the experiences of the crew as they encounter
hazards both personal and technological, on their way to...
what? Enlightenment? The ending is deliberately opaque,
allusive, even baffling. The problem is, how do you
conceive of an unknown ecstatic revelation when, by your
own definition, is something way, way beyond present human
comprehension. The only solution was Kubrick's solution:
poetry and special effects. Sometimes slow-moving and
ponderous, but visually stunning and richly suggestive.
This is one of the most optimistic films of its era, with
it's faith in human progress to eventually achieve some
kind of amazing spiritual consciousness, using the obelisk
as a device, perhaps to suggest that the human race is also
capable of devolving into primitive barbarians again,
without the stimulus of something outside ourselves. The
ending is controversial. You could make a good case for the
argument that Kubrick's reach exceeded his grasp. When
queried about it, Kubrick seemed to retreat into some kind
of deliberate obscurantism, as if that justified the
experiment. The truth is, I don't think it worked. But it
is also true that 2001 is still a terrific film.
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