Since 1968, no film has inspired more conversation about What It All Means than Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece. It’s deceptively simple, though. The slow pace and grand presentation throw some people to think that it’s more abstract than it is.
It takes on one of science fiction’s top themes, which is human evolution and where it started, where it’s taken us and where it’s going. How are we different from the apes of the ancient world and how are we the same? And what pushed us toward evolution in the first place?
Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke’s answer: Aliens did it.
Or, if not aliens, some advanced, intelligent force dropped a tall black monolith down by where a bunch of frightened apes were sleeping one night and the mere presence of the thing—smooth, cleanly proportioned, ultra-simple and intentionally made, not just another rock—provided enough inspiration to kick-start the next four million years of gradual progress. Alien intervention in human development wasn’t a new idea in ’68 and it persists to this day. You can’t listen to Coast to Coast AM for a week here in 2014 without hearing about “ancient astronauts”. Kubrick though was the first to make an entirely serious film about it.
This is not the work of a crazy-eyed disciple (or exploiter) of conspiracy lore. It’s filmmaking of the most disciplined and careful sort. Meticulous. Once upon a time, screenings of it were popular for acid trips—there’s even a vintage psychedelic alternate poster design that appeals to the drug crowd—but the film itself is stone sober. It opens with a musical overture, several minutes of a nerve-rattling score over a black screen, and deserves such theatrical formality. No film captures the eeriness of the ancient world and of outer space like this one.
My advice: See this in a theater if you ever get the chance. That’s where it belongs. This film was made to be bigger and louder than life. If the theater preserves the opening overture and the perfectly timed intermission, they’re doing it right.