April 2, 1968. The first 160-minute cut of 2001: A Space Odyssey was released to a limited audience at the Uptown Theater in Washington D.C. Reactions at first were mixed, most disliking the stilted characters, tedious scenes, and slow pacing. But some saw the beauty in the film, recognizing the majestic space scenes as ships dock with stations and the Discovery speeding towards Jupiter as revolutionary. The movie is still to this day decisive, but largely called one of the greatest films to ever be committed to cinema.

Its main stars include Keir Dullea as David Bowman and Douglas Rain as the daunting supercomputer HAL 9000, HAL being the antagonist of a desperate and determined Dave as he attempts to escape the hold of the “malfunctioning” machine. It was directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by both him and Arthur C. Clarke, famed sci-fi and futurist author. This led to not only a movie being released based on the story, but a book too. Both take inspiration from each other, the book adding needed context to the background, while the movie has a layer of mystery and illusion.

2001’s plot is divided into three parts: The Dawn of Man, Jupiter Mission, & Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. Each gives an insight look into different aspects of humanity, the first giving us our past, the second giving us our present, and the last giving us our future.

Things start out by going as far back as Homo Sapiens could possibly be stretched out to—four million years ago. Here, we see early ape-like figures fight for food and other resources. But that soon gets interrupted, as one side of the battle has an advantage: they come in contact with the monolith. This figure was tall, dark, metallic; it was alien to the uncivilized beings. But after some of the creatures touched it, they all of a sudden gained the knowledge to pick up a bone and use it as a weapon. So, when the next fight for survival came, they were ready to win. And they do so. This then leads to a gripping collage of scenery where they continue to use this new thinking, setting up one of the most iconic jump cuts in cinema history. An ape tosses a bone into the air, it spinning around in the sky above, and then boom, we cut to all those millions of years later, seeing what at the time was the pinnacle of modern human innovation: a satellite.

This all leads to what is essentially The Dawn of Man - Part 2 in 1999, as Dr. Haywood Floyd (played by William Sylvester) travels to the Hilton Space Station V via a Pan American flight (nothing gets more 1960s than that). From there, he goes to The Moon to address an unknown discovery made there earlier in the year. After arriving, we watch as he makes a speech discussing the current cover story, an epidemic, and explains the true reasoning why he is there: to investigate the anomaly that was dug up and ensure complete and total secrecy of what it is. And after all of that, Floyd yet again has to travel, but this time to exactly what he was looking for. TMA-1, or Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1, is what the humans named another mysterious monolith that they found under The Moon. It appeared to have been deliberately buried, but by whom, they don’t know. The structure sent out a radio emission to Jupiter, leading the National Council of Astronautics to send out Discovery One, a mission to explore Jupiter and its moons to discover what exactly is out there.

Then the story jumps to the Jupiter Mission, eighteen months later (we're finally in 2001). A shot of the Discovery follows, letting us take in the sheer size and beauty of the model. Inside the craft, we watch Frank Poole, played by Gary Lockwood, running around the cylindrical body of the interior. From there, we are slowly introduced to the other two characters on the Discovery: Dave Bowman and HAL. There are also 3 other crew members in cryosleep. Between a mixture of BBC interviews, birthday transmissions, and artistry, we learn the daily lives of the two astronauts. And HAL is there to monitor it all, handling a chunk of the load when it comes to piloting the ship toward its destination. This all soon comes to a halt when the perfect and incorruptible HAL seemingly makes a mistake, registering a working antenna as faulty. This shows the first crack in his integrity, the first crack towards the finale, as his flawless track record is tainted. Our two men are suspicious of HAL’s abilities, and they question in “private” whether or not they should shut him down or continue to follow orders. The thing is, when Dave and Frank thought they were having a discreet discussion, it turns out that HAL was reading their lips, and knew exactly what they were going to do to him. What they were going to do was put back the broken part, detect the failure, and then disconnect HAL, taking manual control of the mission. However, due to him hearing Dave and Frank’s plan, when Frank goes out in the pod to reinstall the broken part, HAL attacks, using the pod against him and cutting off his oxygen supply, slowly killing him. Dave gets word of this action, scrambles into a pod, and tracks down the body of his now-dead crewmate. Unfortunately, while Dave is gone, HAL pulls the life support systems of the other three crew members on board in cryosleep, killing them too. This leaves Dave all alone, fighting against a rogue supercomputer with conflicting orders. But there’s more for him to still discover.

Before we cut to the third and final section of this film, we watch a disgruntled Dave Bowman enter through the emergency airlock, since HAL refuses to open the pod bay door (“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that”). And once he enters the vehicle, he heads directly to HAL’s main logic room, where Dave proceeds to disconnect him from the ship. But as he is doing that, a message comes up on a monitor from Dr. Floyd. There, he states the true purpose of the mission, which was unknown to the crew. We, along with Dave, discover that the Discovery was really sent out to Jupiter to examine where the radio message from The Moon monolith was really sending to: a third monolith. It appears orbiting Jupiter, this one being much larger than the original two. The point of their mission was to find it; the point of the transmission was to send humans to the monolith; the point was to show them the possible next evolution in our species.

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite is the last section of this remarkable movie. Dave just disconnected his HAL 9000 computer, and recently discovered the true reason for his mission. So he heads out to the massive figure orbiting Jupiter, the monolith. In his pod, he slowly approaches the mysterious block, similar to the early humans before him. And as Dave gets closer and closer, a mesmerizing collection of colors starts to shoot by him, looking like strokes of paint on a black canvas. This scene goes on for ten minutes, a multitude of hues and imagery passing by him as he sits in his pod, horrified and engrossed at the same time. It is purely fantastical, purely fictional, but undoubtedly magnificent. And this all leads to one of the most open-ended finishes a movie could have, as we see Dave in an all-white bedroom continuously watching himself age, and eventually, turn into the Star Child. A Star Child is the ultimate evolution of all intelligent beings in the universe, a being of pure energy shaped like a fetus. This was the final evolution of humanity, Dave had reached the final evolution of humanity, and now he watches over the Earth waiting for the rest to join him.

This film asks one question and one question only: What is the meaning of life? Currently, in our history, we humans have no idea what the purpose of our existence is. We don’t know why we’re here, or how we’re here, we just know that we are. No matter your beliefs or religion, we can all agree that we are here for a reason, whether noble or not. Our reason for being may be to spread life across our universe, or maybe we’re just a chapter in universal history. 2001: A Space Odyssey attempts to give some insight into a possible—though rather farce—idea of where humanity started. It essentially claims that there are other beings out there, ones who created monoliths, ones who gave us our knowledge. And if you ever expand your interest from just this movie to the sequel or the books, you see exactly what I mean. Those being reached their final form, and were now extending their hand over to humanity for their chance. Now, some may disagree or interpret the film differently, but from just looking at 2001 itself, it seems like quite a possibility. Sadly though, the year 2001 had no such monoliths nor an outer planetary expedition to Jupiter. But still, we don’t know our future, we don’t know the purpose of life, and of course, we don’t know what’s out there. But what's the fun of knowing all the answers?

2001 is just plainly a fascinating film, regardless of the realness or actuality of it. It is an adventure to discover the possible origins of mankind, an adventure to discover the possible future of mankind, and should always be held in history as one of the most important movies ever committed to cinema. The pure wonder that it has given views like me justifies why it is so awesome, and it truly should be watched by all. 2001 is the monolith; touch it, and your evolution will follow (totally not a cult movie, BTW).

“2001: A Space Odyssey (film).” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film). Accessed 20 April 2022.

“Star Child | 2001: A Space Odyssey Wiki | Fandom.” A Space Odyssey Wiki, https://2001.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Child. Accessed 20 April 2022.