2001, A Space Odyssey is a film which many have attempted to interpret throughout the years. It is a movie with no clear singular plot. Rather, 2001 is a film in the purest visual sense: a collection of images which play off our notions of pattern recognition to hint at greater meaning. Yet, interpreting that meaning can become next to impossible in a film so grandiose in scale. It is the film’s very uninterpretability that has drawn so many critics and scholars to it in the first place. In this way, Space Odyssey exemplifies a core aspect of human experience: obsession with the unknown and the desire to bring meaning to it by any means necessary.
From within the world of the film, this great unknown is represented by the monolith. When the proto-humans first discover the monolith they appear almost afraid. Quickly this emotion seems to give way to another. The proto-humans gather around the monolith and begin to repeatedly touch or stroke its surface. The gesture is immediately recognizable as curiosity. By making the monolith physical through touch, the proto-humans attempt to bring this great unknown into their rudimentary lexicon of understanding. No longer is survival the only concern of these pre sapient creatures. The desire to understand brought by the cosmic black box now infects their minds. That question of “where did the monolith come from? where is it going?” is at the same time the question, “where did I come from, where am I going?” We understand the monolith to be the impetus for the proto-human evolution into the humans we see later in the film. This is implied through the sudden use of tools by the proto-humans after their encounter with the monolith. Yet, what the monolith gave the monkey-men was not the knowledge to use tools. What the monolith gave them is something far more valuable than informatory answers, it gave them the ability to question. It did this by way of its own inability to be answered.
Yet, humanity has a complicated relationship with “the unknown.” We tend to value answers far more than questions. Those things that are truly unknowable we attempt to bring into our systems of understanding. Whether these structures of meaning manifest themselves as scientific or religious, we convince ourselves that everything happens for a reason and by extension everything is understandable.
The researchers who encounter the monolith for the second time attempt to understand its appearance through science. Yet, despite the seemingly advanced society of moon bases and space shuttles, the monolith renders the researchers no more advanced than the monkeys who confusedly clawed at its black exterior. Attempts to categorize the object with electromagnetic scans or geological surveys leave them clueless. In a climactic moment, the researchers attempt to take a picture with the monolith. Just before the shutter can click, the black box begins to omit a high pitched screaming sound, incapacitating the astronauts. It is as if the monolith consciously defies the attempt made by the researchers to bring it into the realm of their understanding. In taking a photo, they are attempting to categorize it, to reduce its significance to that of a mere image.
After this encounter, we understand that the monolith has relayed a radio signal to Jupiter, prompting a mission there. It is fitting that the monolith always seems to move itself spatially farther from humanity each time it is found. And yet its mere existence is enough to justify chasing it to the galaxy’s edge and beyond. Once an unknown has made itself known, the human desire to understand and categorize it becomes unstoppable. The monolith is that object which gives life meaning by its very lack thereof.
It is ironic to speak about the monolith as uninterpretable all the while interpreting it as such. However, just because something is an unsolvable enigma does not make attempting to interpret it any less worthwhile. The attempt to analyze 2001, or any film for that matter, is always a foolhardy task at best if one is looking for the one true interpretation, the definitive answer of what a film really means. A film never knows what it is about, at best it only thinks it knows what it’s about. Films don’t know, they think, and thinking is the realm of questions, not of answers. What keeps us coming back, time and time again, to movies like 2001 are the multiplicitous and infinite ways there are to interpret it. Although we will never fully understand the film, it is unknown that prompts us to think, pushing us forward as human beings.