This was a confusing and unsatisfying movie for me the first
time I saw it. It seemed pointless in a lot of ways, especially
in the beginning, and a couple of plot twists seemed like non
sequiturs. For example, why does HAL become homicidal? And
what is the monolith; what is its role?
After reading Nietzsche’s Beyond
Good and Evil, and discovering 2001’s connection
to Nietzsche, I understand this movie better. 2001’s connection
to Nietzsche is clear, given the choice of Strauss’ Also Sprach
Zarathustra as its theme music; the music’s title happens
(by no coincidence) to be the title of one of Nietzsche’s books.
Translated “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, this book expounds
on the same themes as in Beyond Good and Evil, but in fictional
rather than essay form.
A central theme of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and of the movie, punctuated
by Strauss’ music, is that if someone can overpower those who
stand in the way of his own goals, he should, and make no apologies
for it, since that will ultimately produce the noblest outcome.
Nietzsche defines the “will to power”, the ability to
make others conform their wills to yours, as a sort of “first
cause” of consciousness; that which provides the underlying
motive for all other motives.
The first part of the movie, “The Dawn of Man”, illustrates
this in a straightforward manner. A tribe of miserable hominids
is shown shambling through life. They compete for food with some
tapir-like animals; one scene shows one of these tapirs actually
taking food directly away from one of the hominids, who complains,
but does nothing else. They are also chased away from a desirable
watering hole by another tribe of hominids, after being cowed
by an aggressive display by the leader of the other tribe.
Enter the enigmatic monolith. The beaten-down hominids awake one
morning to find it standing nearby. This image, and the images
that follow, are among the most powerful in the movie. The monolith
is communicating something to the hominids, indicated by a disturbing
and intense cacophony that sounds vaguely like a mob shouting.
There’s a shot from the hominids’ viewpoint, looking up the length
of the monolith to the sun and moon seeming to rest on the top
of the monolith, at their zenith. The perspective makes the monolith
itself to appear to be a walkway to the heavens.
The next morning, one of the hominids that was listening to the
monolith comes across the dry bones of a tapir. He picks up one
of the longer bones and is idly poking around with it. Flashback
to the “walkway to heaven” scene. Cue Strauss’ Also
Sprach Zarathustra as the hominid starts to hit the remaining
bones with greater and greater ferocity, shrieking in triumph
as the music crescendos. Sudden cut forward in time to a live
tapir falling over in slow motion, and then a scene of this new
alpha male sharing the fresh tapir meat with the rest of his tribe.
The food-stealers have become the food.
Next the monolith-powered hominids revisit the watering hole.
The tapir-killer holds the same bone. The rival tribe is there
as well, and their alpha male makes his same aggressive display.
This time, however, when he rushes the tapir-killer, the tapir-killer
clubs him to death with the bone. The rival tribe disperses in
fear. The tapir-killer screams and cavorts in triumph, as Strauss’
theme crescendos again; then he hurls the bone in the air and
it becomes the space shuttle, in perhaps the most famous transition
in the movie.
Some of the theories I have heard about the role of the monolith
have posited that the monolith gives intelligence or technology
to the hominids. I don’t think the movie shows this at all. What
it seems to give them are “balls”, if you will excuse
the crudity. It implies that consuming or overpowering one’s obstacles
no matter what they are, is the path to achieving noble and glorious
triumphs such as space travel. Nietzsche would agree with this
completely.
With this understanding, we can now correctly interpret what
happens to Dave Bowman’s crew aboard the Discovery later
on. As we all know, the computer HAL seems to go insane, killing
the rest of the crew and trying also to kill Dave, who retaliates
by disassembling HAL’s memory.
The enigma of HAL’s insanity is why? Why did he start acting this
way? The sequel, 2010, gives one explanation: that HAL
was told to lie, and could not accomplish this task in cybernetic
purity of conscience, and so went insane. This explanation is
the “official” one. In 2010, HAL is shown repaired,
and subsequently sacrificing himself to save the humans, in fine
altruistic form. Moreover, both 2001 and 2010 were
written by Arthur C. Clarke, so the authorial interpretation appears
to be undisputed.
However, it is important to realize that Kubrick did not direct
or help to write 2010, and it was Kubrick who tied the
movie to Nietzsche. As you may remember, a much larger monolith
was in orbit around Jupiter, which Discovery was journeying
to visit. Within the context of 2001, given the story with
the prehistoric hominids, it seems clear that the monolith communicated
its same message to HAL, telling it, in so many words, “you
can take them.” This demonstrates a parallelism between the
first part of the movie and the second: the Dawn of Man and the
Dawn of Machine.
What is the monolith and its role? It is an indifferent, automated
evolutionary midwife. It is not pulling for one “side”
or the other; it simply communicates its wordless message of supremacy
and triumph over cloying obstacles.
There is still the third part of the movie to explain. This begins
when Dave Bowman enters the monolith and discovers within it a
kind of gateway to a place where he is transformed and moves beyond
the boundaries of age and space, becoming the incorporeal “Star
Child”.
The last time we see the monolith, before Bowman’s transformation,
it is standing at the foot of Bowman’s deathbed, as an aged Bowman
reaches for it. Standing in the position of Death, the monolith
still appears to be acting as an evolutionary midwife, but not
in the same way as it did with the hominids and with HAL.
Kubrick may be saying that once a race reaches the stars, the
path to the next stage of consciousness lies not in subverting
others’ will to yours but to transcending the body. At Bowman’s
deathbed, the position and proportions of the monolith make it
look like a doorway. Perhaps the monolith’s message is heard one
way by a being not yet conscious (the hominids or HAL) and another
way by a conscious being (Dave Bowman). It is significant that
Strauss’ theme is played again when the Star Child makes its final
appearance, dwarfing Earth itself. Is there a way to reconcile
the message of the “will to power” with Bowman’s transformation?
Perhaps Bowman’s consciousness has to subdue the survival instincts
of his body; that his will has to overcome the will of his body.
Certainly the scene that shows Bowman stretching and reaching
for the monolith shows that the transformation is partly due to
Bowman himself and not something entirely forced on him by the
monolith. Nietzsche would probably agree that any act of transcending
something is really an act of overpowering that same thing, and
that nothing noble is born without this sort of struggle and triumph.
Am I all wet or right on? Send me a comment!