On a twelfth watching of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

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My husband loves this movie.  He has caused me to watch it a great deal.  We even own it.
Some thoughts.   
  • This is a pre-eminently religious movie, or at least a film with religious ideas.    
  • The movie, to me, is about the evolution of our tools.  What Kubrick gets right is that the tools are taking over, and that cutting the cord on the tools does not mean going back to what was before.   

  • Some people who would combine evolution with Christianity seem to have taken the Kubrick approach.  In the film the aliens or gods or whatever gave a push to evolution through an intervention (the monolith).  The primates’ first use of the tool, however, is to destroy, not to build.  They kill to eat, then kill to be dominant. So is this progress?  Well, maybe I’m confusing evolution with progress, which moderns do.  Christians who want to combine evolution with creation seem to be saying the same thing, except that God used evolution and then got really involved to give the beings or species that He wanted to be “mankind” an extra level of consciousness or something.  Hummmm. 
  • Man evolves to a god.  Mormonism, anyone?
  • Is this the beginning of product place ement:  Pan Am, Bell, Hilton, Howard Johnson (Howard Johnson?—hardly a high-class brand today).
  • All that said, it is a brilliant film.  HAL was named one of the worst villains by the American Film Institute; his voice is unbelievably eerie and I sometimes mock it to talk to my husband (as well as mocking the Cheech and Chong record, “Dave’s not here, man.”)  Obviously, you now know my husband’s name.

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