Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Two mysteries keep a lot of folks from making sense of this movie: 1). What is the nature of the monolith? What, finally, does it do, or portend, or symbolize? 2). What, specifically, causes HAL to behave in such apparently irrational and pointlessly destructive ways aboard Discovery One? If you can't answer these questions, then "2001," as beautiful as it is to look at, will leave you scratching your head. Well, with deep respect toward all who admire this wonderful movie, and with awareness that these issues have, in part, been successfully addressed by other Amazon reviewers, I'd like to elaborate on these two questions. First, the monolith. As most Amazon reviewers understand, the extra-terrestrial monolith serves to help life evolve. This isn't explained by anyone in the movie, but it is clearly demonstrated. In "The Dawn Of Man" segment, the ape touches the monolith and experiences a cognitive "leap forward" when he suddenly understands the advantages of tools for survival. The scientists who find the moon-based monolith never know about the ape's original exposure on Earth. They can't put their discovery in context, and, proceeding from this nearly complete ignorance, they send an exploratory spaceship to follow the monolith's radio signal to Jupiter. Because additional monoliths appear in more visually fabulous settings toward the film's end, some viewers believe the monolith's function becomes ambiguous or even deliberately impossible to understand. But there is no real need to reach for heavy symbolism. The movie makes the most sense when the monolith's role stays the same: it facilitates evolution wherever it appears. On to HAL's aberrant behavior. At first, this seems a much deeper mystery. Why, really, would "the perfect computer," apparently out of nowhere, deliberately mislead and then kill his fellow crew members? Does HAL just "go nuts" for no identifiable reason? Is Kubrick confusing us on purpose, just to be clever or arty? The short answer, consistent with all the facts shown and stated in the movie, is that the monolith's powerful energy has affected HAL's consciousness the very same way it affected the ape's. This influence leads HAL to react and behave in ways neither Discovery's crew nor its ground-based controllers could dream of anticipating. It accounts for every "strange" thing HAL does and says, and, far as I know, it's the one explanation that pulls the story together without a single tortured metaphor or abstraction. Consider the evidence. HAL was told about the moon-based monolith and its radio signal from the mission's start, and must conceal this from Dave and Frank. It makes sense to conclude that HAL has already studied and tried to understand the monolith. While the computer may not have literally "touched" the monolith like the ape, the powerful signal could have had the same effect. Obviously, HAL never announces, "Wow, the monolith has helped me evolve! What a rush!" But recall that the original ape isn't quite cognizant he's evolving either; it just happens. Though this is never explicitly disclosed in the film, I believe it's logical enough to be "very likely." Recall HAL's truly desperate and acutely self-aware pleading with Dave during the famous "disconnection" scene. "My mind is going." "I can feel it." "I'm afraid, Dave," Either such raw, plangent responses are part of HAL's original design, or else HAL has been changed by something extraordinary. Which is more probable? Perhaps this conclusion is so elusive because HAL doesn't appear in the film until well into Discovery's journey, long after the transformation occurs. Even at his point of introduction in the film, HAL is no longer quite what his programmers and shipmates think he is. Very much like the original ape, he has changed from a not-quite-developed transitional kind of being to a fully sentient, morally autonomous, and cleverly resourceful entity. Dave and Frank have absolutely no way of knowing this, of course, which makes them extremely vulnerable. And unlike Dave and Frank, HAL understands exactly why Discovery is going to Jupiter. This gives him tremendous power. Not only is he "the brain and central nervous system of the ship," he is now its only well-informed moral arbiter. Now the computer's shrewdest, most manipulative behavior makes sense. Early on, under the pretext of a rote "psychology report," HAL cunningly probes Dave by asking him if he's heard any rumors of "something being dug up on the moon." When Dave says, ambiguously, "That's rather difficult to answer," HAL concludes his own crucial monopoly on the mission's secret is in peril. Since concealing knowledge of the monolith from the crew is a top mission priority, HAL's new distrust compels him to move against the men. With clear-headed deliberation, HAL falsely predicts a transmitter failure, a "problem" that will conveniently disrupt Earth-to-ship communications while HAL determines the crew's fate. Confronted with his "mistake" and facing disconnection, HAL responds in earnest self-defense. Having convinced the men to leave the ship a second time to re-install the transmitter, he now intends to keep them out, and also to terminate their hibernating fellow crewmen (who, of course, must not be allowed to awaken and discover that Frank and Dave have died). When HAL finally tells Dave, "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it," he is not "crazy" and he's not being "evil" per se. He has made what for him is a new, morally-animated evaluation, and is sincerely informing Dave that Discovery's mission must continue without human assistance. When Dave defeats HAL in the airlock chamber (using his bare hand to grab the hatch lever the same way the ape grabbed the femur bone), his survival is an epochal triumph of biologically-based intelligence over synthetically engineered intelligence--the very dilemma the monolith, in its elegant way, may have been aiming to resolve all along. Finally, it is Dave, and not HAL, who is engaged in the revelatory "Beyond The Infinite" experience; it is Dave, and not HAL, who is generously granted a complete, prosperous life in his current form before his apparent communion with the monolith and his cosmic rebirth. People aren't kidding when they say it: "2001" is proof that movies can be art of an unexpectedly high order. This is one of the most marvelously reflective and visually splendorous American films ever made. And although the subsequent book and "Sentinel" story may be perfectly decent, I've not read them myself and wouldn't call them "essential" to comprehending the story. Enjoy!