phaedrus@eneevax.UUCP (03/01/84)
Here in the Washington D.C. area "2001: A Space Odyssey" was shown on TV.
I hope I am not the only one, but I am thoroughly confused about the
ending. If someone has a sure fire interpretation, please mail it to me
or if you feel it is of general interest post it to the news.
Thanks in advance.
--
Pravin Kumar
{If you find the answer don't tell me; I don't want to know}
ARPA: phaedrus%eneevax%umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!eneevax!phaedruswetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (T C Wheeler) (03/02/84)
To understand the ending of the movie (2001), you have to light up a "left-handed" cigarette just about the time the wild light show begins. I saw the movie in three different theatres and observed that those who seemed to understand what was going on were grabbing some smoke just as the scene started. I halfway understood at that time because of the three guys behind me who were blowing smoke my way. Other than that, I would like an explanation too. T. C. Wheeler
rosul@nmtvax.UUCP (03/04/84)
O.K.-Enough meandering. I have seen "2001, A Space Odyssey" at least 7 times and have read the book, oh, about 20 times. Having explained the ending to many a person, I will try to clear up all questoins here and now. First, it helps your understanding if you have read the book. It can say things that the movie couldn't. I will presume that the book has not been read, and you have only seen the movie. Now, in my opinion, the movie starts to get confusing when the script goes away. This takes place about the time when Dave Bowman has just un- pluged HAL from his main circuits. The Discovery is floating around a moon of Jupiter. (In the book, they are around a moon of Saturn). Dave Bowman is just leaving the ship to check out TMA 2. He is then 'sucked' into the thing by forces unknown. After a brief flythrough in LSD land, he lands on what appears to be the lobby of a Washington hotel he once stayed in. We than watch as Dave is transformed from young man, to old man, to older man, then to a baby. The movie then ends with a couple shots of Earth, thereby confusing everyone. Now, what happened is this: If you couldn't figure it out, the thing that David found, the thing on the moon, and the thing in the beginning of the movie, were all placed by the same people. Now, these 'people' are of a higher society than ours and they placed these thing all over the galaxy to 'test' civilizations that they found in their travels. The first one was just a test to get us on our way, the second one, on the moon, was there as a beacon to alert whomever that we had progressed to a particular level, and the last one was our reward for finding these things. What happened to Dave is that he was transformed, by the 'creatures' into one of them. The 'light tunnel' was an 'off-ramp' to the stars. The motel room was a ploy by the creatures to put Dave at ease. What happened to him is that the went through like a pendulum state, swinging from old to young, and then back even before his conception. At this point, David Bowman was, as the book put it, a Star Child. Now, the second book by Arthur C. Clarke, "2010: Odyssey 2", explains a lot of what happened. It is aa good book if you have read the first one or have seen the movie. A movie version of "2010" is coming (or so they say) this summer. This explanation was derived from reading the book multiple times, seeing the movie multiple times, reading the second book, and long talks with my sister on the subject of space travel, time warps, and like stuff. Hope that answer all questions! if not, either mail your inquiries to me or post them here, and I will try to answer them. Thanks for your time! Sincerely, Ronald "Not quite all here" Rosul@nmtvax New Mexico tech, Socorro, New Mexico. p.s.-I'm going to be dissappointed if there are no 'second opinions' on this!!!!!
y4101@dalcs.UUCP (Marcus Aurellius) (03/04/84)
A question like that will leave you open to an awful lot of versions. Here is my reply ... First - read the book. Most movies are made so that you can simply walk in and watch the movie without any preparation. Thus you are entertained solely by the experience of the movie. Other movies require that you know a little about the subject matter. Many of us will have read "The Lord of the Rings". Now, if you were to see this made into a movie, which would you rather have, a rewritting of the story so that it can fit into a 3 hour show and so that people who have not read the book will understand, or a faithful representation of the book (again in 3 hours) but with things left out and thus just concentrating on the images of the main event. (Of course we would actually want a 20 hour movie showing it all but we must be reasonable). Well, now we have "2001: A Space Odyssey". This is a movie belonging to the second type. If you want to know what it is about, you read the book. Then, if you want to see what you just read, you watch the movie. The movie doesn't explain what you see, you already know because you read the book. But it does give you a good visual representation of what you read. Granted, for all of the people who did not read the book, this movie is not a very good one. But for the people who know what is going on, its a visual fantasy. Now - to answer the particular question asked ... The book (caution - I am going from memory here) has Bowman arriving in a rather colonial apartment which he recognizes because he was once in such a room. The aliens have constructed the setting so that he will feel a little more comfortable (now here is where the movie could have ruined everything by having an alien pop in and say just that - but again, for those of us who read the book, we know this, so the movie doesn't need to say it. Instead, it simply shows what really happened. After all, Bowmen knows he say this place before so it doesn't make any sense for an alien to come in and repeat the fact to him). Bowman spends the rest of his life under observation (I don't know how long but long enough for him to grow very old and die). Well, we can't sit through all of that so the movie show the passage of time effectively by having Bowman move around and getting older (yes, it does appear as if he sees himself but its all images - really). About the breaking glass? Who knows! At the end, another monolith appears, he points to it and bingo, we see a fetus appear along side the earth. Well, before I read the sequel I assumed that this was all symbolic of mans first encounter with life forms in the rest of the Universe. Thus we would have the Birth of Mankind. I still like that idea. However, for those people who read the sequel, we now know that the StarChild is a real thing. It is Bowman and it does return to Earth on behalf of the aliens. So the end of the movie can then be interpreted as Bowman as the StarChild approaching the Earth. Why? Read the sequel. You really should read the book though, it explains alot (as does "The lost worlds of 2001" which explains even more). For instance, after Bowman gets into the ship through the emergancy air lock (non of this Outlander sh*t of heads exploding - this is real science here) we next see him walking around in full suit. Why? It won't say in the movie but in the book, HAL has another go at trying to murder Bowman which results in all of the air leaving the ship - thus he now walks around in his suit. (By the way, the sequel does give a good reason as to why HAL does all this). Now, for all you people who go on at length about how this technically perfect film has this horrendous flaw of the liquid being drawn back into the straw despite the lack of gravity. Consider, without a counterforce to keep the liquid down the straw, removing your mouth from the straw could force small drops of liquid out and into the air. So, keep a vacuum inside the box under the bag holding the liquid. When you finish drinking, the vacuum formed by your leaving mouth is canceled by the internal vacuum in the box and the liquid does not come out - in fact it goes back down into the box. (Sure it a patch up solution - but it works). And last, but not least. The movie of the sequel is expected to be out this comming Christmas - alas not by the same producer. Sorry for the length ... hope my version answers some questions. .. Marcus Aurellius Dalhousie University