Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey

The ending of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey appears to many viewers to be too obscure and even to have little to do with the film as a whole, but this is a misreading of what takes place. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a film that may appear to lack a cohesive literary structure and to be instead a series of barely related incidents at different time periods, with different characters and somewhat obscure situations. The protracted journey through the starscape near the end of the film and the peculiar imagery that succeeds it, all occurring without external comment or explanation, can add to the sense that there is a lack of cohesion and purpose to the film. In truth, though, the structure of this film is carefully wrought and coheres around thematic concerns, recurring images, and a central issue that carries the plot to a logical if tentative conclusion. There is meaning in the ending, and to ascertain this meaning it is necessary to consider the structure of the entire film and the manner in which the filmmaker carries meaning through imagery and through relationships between different images and ideas across many thousands of years of time.

Consider first the title. The use of the word "odyssey" is carefully calculated to evoke an image of the great literary epic The Odyssey in which the central character of Ulysses takes an extended journey because he has offended Poseidon. Ulysses takes thirty years to return from the siege of Troy, and during that time he

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t in themselves. Bordwell and Thompson refer to a film's diegesis, or the total world of the story action (67), and in 2001 the diegesis is essential to an understanding of what happens. The story dos not unfold with what we usually think of as "plot" except in the HAL 9000 sequence, but that is only one segment of the totality of this journey from pre-human to post-human. The diegesis begins with the first image on the screen as the sun, moon, and earth come into rare conjunction, signalling the dawn of a new era and the beginning of something significant in the universe. Everything that follows is related to the plot and theme, both of which develop more around imagery than the usual dramatic interaction. The first "characters" on screen are the pre-human apes living on the African plain. This section is entitled "The Dawn of Man," indicating clearly that "Man" is the subject of the film to come. In the beginning is the end, and the conclusion of the film is truly the end of "Man" and the beginning of something else not yet named. The apes in the opening sequence do not become human only through evolutionary change. They are at the point where their mental development is such as to make them receptive to the external in

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