2001: Evolution to the Stars

 Warning: Spoilers for 2001: A Space Odyssey ahead. I highly suggest that you watch it. Unfortunately, it cannot be found on Netflix.

Finally, a movie in color! And what a movie it is!

Stanley Kubrick's magnum opus 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in the midst of the space race. In 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, and the world's two great superpowers shot for the moon. 2001 was conceived of by Kubrick in 1964, and was released in April of 1968, a little over a year before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

The film imagines a future (well, 2001 was the future at the time) in which space travel is a normal occurrence; the astronomer Dr. Floyd takes a shuttle to a massive space station orbiting earth, then boards another shuttle for the Clavius moon base. Through all of this, even in zero gravity, he wears normal business attire.

The film sets out to produce a realistic view of space travel, in part by taking inspiration from the fledgling space programs of the time. Food comes in vacuum-sealed packages, and is drunk through straws. Gravity is not produced through some mystical process, but rather through the spinning of the space station. Even when Dr. Bowman and Dr. Poyle set out for Jupiter on a later mission, their travel time is represented accurately. And, of course, there is no sound in space, and there is no sound in 2001's version of space, either.

The film is a reaction to the space race in more ways than the accuracy of its space travel. Its central mystery is a number of strange black obelisks. In the first scene of the film, one such obelisk comes to a group of apes, appearing to teach them to use tools and leading to their evolution into humans. Millions of years later, another obelisk is found on the moon; the subject of Dr. Floyd's research, this one does nothing but send a radio pulse to an area of space around Jupiter. When Dr. Bowman examines this area of space, he finds anothe obelisk.

The obelisk flings Dr. Bowman through the universe at faster-than-light speeds, before transforming him into a giant, baby-like creature looking down at earth from orbit.

Kubrick seems to suggest that such a state is the next stage of human evolution. Obviously, we aren't going to evolve into star babies, but during the space race the possibility that we could evolve beyond the earth was very real. What would humanity look like, once it had colonized other planets or even other stars? Perhaps we would be looking down at the earth from above, seeing it as a single, unified planet.

Kubrick's message seems to be, like so many others of his time, at least partially a response to the cold war. The star baby does not see individuals, or even nations, but rather a single planet, one among many. Kubrick suggests that to perceive the world as the star baby does, as a unified whole, represents an evolution beyond the conflict of the cold war.