“Its origin and purpose still a total mystery.”

Arthur C Clarke once said, “"If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered." 2001: A Space Odyssey (released in 1968) may be the greatest achievement in Stanley Kubrick’s long list of amazing works. Its ambition reaches to the infinite cosmos of space and beyond. It’s a plethora of images and music designed with the greatest precision for the purpose of asking some of man’s deepest fears and most perplexing questions. It may be a challenge for some, but a masterpiece for those ready to take on such an ambitious work of art.

Kubrick remains one of the most perplexing directors to date, and in my mind, the greatest to ever live (this is not the last time we will see him on this list). His patience with some of his shots, the craft of editing the music and special effects together, and the overall open ended conversation the film leaves you with are some of his amazing trademarks he has left us with. Kubrick usually did not create his own original screenplays but with the help of science fiction author Clarke, the two became a cooperative team by creating the film and the book at the same time.

What remains the most potent piece of Kubrick’s work is the choice of music. Kubrick has always used great music pieces to coincide with his work (see “Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Second Movement” in A Clockwork Orange) but two pieces in 2001 remain timeless. Though Kubrick originally had a score commissioned for the film, he dropped it later, using classical works instead. The brilliant opening of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” feels like a moment of epiphany for no other reason than how Kubrick reveals the alignment of the planets. For the opening (and later the closing) of 2001: A Space Odyssey, these moments are a reflection of everything that makes the film so amazing: beautiful images, patience, superb coloration with music, and just a pure sense of awe.

Then come the curious apes. The first twenty minutes of the film take place during a time before man, where ape rules the world. They are then visited by an object that has become known as the monolith. It’s a large, rectangular, black slate. The apes know nothing about it, but react in a way that displays fear. Why? Because it isn’t part of them. It is too smooth, too perfect, and too alien to be apart of their ape culture. The only sense of extraterrestrial intelligent life in this film comes from these monoliths. With this, Kubrick and Clarke create an extremely mysterious nature to the film that amends to its timelessness. The monolith leaves the apes with only one new ideas, but one that’s so important: the ability to wield and create tools.

As we see the apes learn how to use the tool and then throw a bone up in joy, we get one of the greatest edits in cinema history. We cut from the tool to the year 2001 where a lonely spaceship begins to dock. If you didn’t notice, we just skipped through 12000 years of human existence. This could be simply dismissed as a “cool effect” but if you really think about it, Kubrick just rejected  everything in human kind that had evolved over those years. Man’s actions in the today or now feel pointless. Our entire evolution of society, our achievements in technology and the human mind, our existence has a race, has just been spurned by a simple edit.

We now enter my other favorite musical sequence, “The Blue Danube” docking sequence. It’s 10 minutes long and there is no dialogue. This could have been a five second sequence, but Kubrick demands that it be a slow, cautious process. Why? To show us the delicacy of human life. To show us that with humans, things must take time, and if we rush them, even with our great technology and tools we have built, we will fail as a species. Another sequence, much later in the film shows a man in a spacesuit fixing part of a spaceship. This sequence is also very long and almost unnecessary. There isn’t even music this time! But wait…there is one noise. Breathing. We hear the slow breath of a spaceman. In my mind, Clarke and Kubrick see this as the next process of evolution and that is why David becomes the Star Child at the end. He is the future of human kind where tools are no longer needed, no matter how advance they are.

The dangers of technology also appear in one of the most memorable villains to grace the big screen: the HAL 9000. HAL is simple. He is simply a red dot computer with a monotone voice that was made by man do help humans. But with artificial intelligence, HAL realizes that man is not capable for such important missions (thus the need to evolve). There is the amazing sequence when HAL reads the lips of the two star travelers. There is no dialogue that tells us that; simply the brilliant editing and cinematography that Kubrick has put together. When HAL gives his final monologue, it shows us how tools and man have interwoven. HAL needs David as much as David needs HAL, and it is time for the two to part.

Jupiter and Beyond, the fourth part of 2001 remains the most complicated and tedious for some audiences. Today, the sequence simply looks weird but in 1968, it was revolutionary. The multitude of images put together with the overall oddity of the situation of the worm hole can be strange to some, but it remains a truly awe inspiring moment. At the end of the worm hole, David lives out the rest of his life in a strange white room, then on his deathbed, is visited by the monolith, which evolves David into the star child, the evolution step that will dismiss technology from man’s importance and send the human race into the 21st century.

In this essay, I have given parts of my own interpretation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But that doesn’t make it right. Like the quote from Clarke at the beginning, there is no right answer when trying to understand this movie. The beauty of this film is to have your own existential discovery on what is the meaning our existence. Beyond the images, the music, and the story are the perplexing questions that will haunt the human race until we die out or as my interpretation suggests, evolve to fit are infinitely growing intelligence.

2001: A Space Odyssey on its most primitive level is a technical masterpiece. It’s a combination of visuals and music. There are eighty eight minutes without any dialogue. And many of the conversations within this movie are less than what they are about than their actual existence (think of the meeting of the scientists in the space station). The ambition to make such a project could remain as a sole testament to the genius of Kubrick’s work. But everything else is to perfect. The film has been a jumping point of a discussion on human existence for almost forty years, and will continue to do so as time passes on through the infinite. That word strikes a chord with this film. Infinite is the single word I would use to describe 2001: A Space Odyssey.