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2001: A Space Odyssey(1968) is one of the most enduring science fiction films ever made. Based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke (who co-wrote the screenplay with director Stanley Kubrick), it begins in humanity's distant past, when a group of primitive humans begins using tools after being visited by a mysterious monolith. Millions of years later, astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) is sent on a mission to investigate what ends up being another monolith orbiting Jupiter.
Along the way, Dave comes into conflict with the onboard computer, HAL 9000, which delivers one of the most powerful lines in all of sci-fi. Dave reaches Jupiter by himself and approaches the monolith. He's pulled into a vortex of colored light and sees strange landscapes. Eventually, he finds himself in a room decorated like a French bedroom from the eighteenth century, with discordant futuristic elements. He grows into an old man in this room, lies down to die, and reaches out to touch another monolith when one appears in front of his bed. He is then transformed into a glowing infant encased in a bubble of light, and finally appears above the planet Earth.
People have puzzled over this ending for decades. Movie star Rock Hudson was one of hundreds of people who famously walked out of an early screening, wondering what in the world this was supposed to mean. As it turns out, Stanley Kubrick once explained it all.
The Meaning of '2001: A Space Odyssey,' Confirmed
In 2018, a YouTube channel called "image circulation" uploaded a video showing what appears to be footage from a never-released documentary about the paranormal, directed by filmmaker Jun’ichi Yaoi. In the footage from 1980, Yaoi was at EMI Elstree Studios while Kubrick was filming the 1980 horror movie The Shining. He even talks to Kubrick's daughter Vivien, who was filming her own documentary about The Shining at the time.
Yaoi actually has Vivien Kubrick on camera, which suggests that this footage is legitimate. In the key section, he talks to Stanley Kubrick on the phone and asks about the meaning of the ending of 2001. And Kubrick answers: “I’ve tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas, if they’re dramatized, one feels it. But I’ll try.” He continued:
The idea was supposed to be: he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. And they put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room, and he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film. And they choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture — deliberately so, inaccurate — because they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty but weren't quite sure, just as we're not quite sure what to do in zoos with animals to try and give them what we think is their natural environment.
Kubrick added:
Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super-being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman, and we have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is a pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.
Assuming this footage is legitimate, and the surrounding context suggests that it is, this appears to close the book on exactly what happens to Dave at the end of the movie. It's roughly the same thing that happens in Arthur C. Clarke's novel, except Clarke doesn't leave it to our imagination what this new "superman" (known popularly as the Star-Child) does when he returns to Earth. In Clarke's book, the Star-Child intercepts an orbiting nuclear weapon and detonates it before it can reach its intended target. He truly behaves like Superman.
It's also worth noting that the original script for 2001: A Space Odysseyincludes a lengthy speech from a narrator originally meant to be read over this final sequence. While the narrator doesn't mention a human zoo, they share more details about the entities doing this to Dave. According to this narrator, an alien species began working on the monoliths long ago, but handed the job over to thinking machines of their own design, machines that had "transcended them in every way." These machines eventually evolved into, as Kubrick puts it, "god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form." And that's who is setting Dave up in his sci-fi Rococo bedroom.
Obviously, this narration didn't make it into the final film. Kubrick pared things back, preferring to keep things mysterious. But was that the right decision?
Stanley Kubrick Was Correct Not to Explain Himself in '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Film critics, fans, and academics have debated the meaning of 2001: A Space Odysseyever since it was released. However, it's very possible that wouldn't have happened had Kubrick spelled out exactly what he meant in the film itself. The mystery has kept it alive. As Kubrick himself says, "When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas, if they’re dramatized, one feels it."
We don't even have to leave Kubrick's filmography to find another example of this principle at work. The Shining is another classic Kubrick film that is still talked about today. It has stood the test of time, partly because Kubrick leaves some of the central questions unanswered. Does Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) try to murder his family because the ghosts in the Overlook Hotel drive him to madness? Or does he suffer a psychotic break, and the ghosts are all in his head? Interestingly, a 1997 miniseries called Stephen King's The Shining sticks much closer to the original book and makes it clear that the ghosts are real. But no one talks about that miniseries today, whereas modern action movies still reference Kubrick's vision. The mystery has given the movie staying power.
Explanations are vastly overrated. If you want to watch and enjoy 2001: A Space Odyssey today, I recommend forgetting Kubrick's.
