Space ODDyssey- What the heck is going on!?

We’ve all been well trained throughout our many school years to get over excited, and giggly when class time is replaced by ‘film time’!!!!

All set up with our snacks and cans of juice we embarked on the journey that was ‘A space Odyssesy’. I was pretty intrigued since our tutor Hugh had earlier described it as the ‘best film of ALL time’. You’d built up some pretty high hopes Hugh... But being completely honest I spent the vast majority of the film wondering what the heck was going on and what on earth those horrible noises were; the film has very little scripted words and a whole lot of screeching, heavy breathing and dramatic music.

The whole experience was confusing to say the least, confirmed by the fact that the whole class piped up with a unified ‘WHAT?!?!?!!?’ as the end titles rolled.

So what the heck was going on?! After digging deep I kind of started to understand. This is how I see it…. Its all about the evolution of man and his ‘tools’, controlled by this big black cuboid (this mysterious cuboid plays a big role in the film so remember him).

 In the opening scene the apes discover bones as tools after touching the mysterious cuboid, this snaps straight to the space age, man has evolved so much by this point that his tools have turned to technology, space craft and most importantly the computer system ‘Hal’, an artificial intelligence, my favourite character of the film, she’s got sass! This demonstrated how man had evolved to such an extent that he now used technology to further progress his intelligence.

But ‘Hal’ gets too smart for the mere humans and plans a revolt! She throws one of the 2 main astronauts, Frank, into space and then as Dave goes to save him she locks him out of the space ship – technology has taken over mans intelligence and may be his demise- how ironic! But man has something technology does not : courage and determination. Dave gets himself back into the space ship and uses his tools to shut Hal down. THE TABLES HAVE TURNED!

What may seem like a victory for man kind but we now realise Dave Is alone in space without his artificial intelligence and things aren’t looking good. Can man survive alone? This is when stuff gets particularly abstract… a lot of flashing images and loud music leading up to the end scenes showing Dave looking upon himself as he ages through his life and his evolution, until Kubrick predicts the next step of human evolution: Dave reaches out for the black cuboid and turns into a ‘star child’. He has all of the knowledge of the universe and has been transformed into an immortal to be sent back to earth to act as ‘god’ to guide the process of evolution.

Simple eh? Now I think I get it all I’ve got more of an appreciation for this cult classic.

All in all it got me thinking…When does mans race with technology end? Will we eventually lose to the robots?