Question: Why is there is such an absence of love in this film? Two birthdays are observed. Dr. Haywood Floyd calls his little 5-year-old daughter on Earth, wishes her happy birthday, but never once says "I love you," which seems only a natural thing for a father to tell his child. Later, astronaut Frank Poole's parents wish him happy birthday, but never once say "I love you"; rather, his father says, "Give our love to Dave (Bowman). " Nobody ever says "I love you," despite the dire circumstances.
Charles Austin Miller
23rd Oct 2021
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
22nd Jan 2005
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Question: I don't understand the significance of the monolith or the starbaby. Can someone explain it to me?
Answer: As author Arthur C. Clarke explained it, the first Monolith (the one seen at the beginning of the film and then buried on the Moon) was a space probe from an incomprehensibly more advanced alien intelligence that resided inside a star elsewhere in the cosmos. The Monolith's objective was to seek out lifeforms that had potential and "tweak" their neural evolution, causing them to evolve toward intelligence. In the case of Mankind on Earth, once the modification was made, the Monolith probe retreated to the Moon and waited 4 million years for Mankind to reach it. When Mankind reached the Moon, the Monolith sent a signal to the next phase of the experiment, which was another Monolith in orbit of Jupiter. When Mankind reached the Jupiter Monolith in a matter of months, the Monolith acted as an interdimensional portal to the other side of the universe, transporting the evolved human specimen to its creator (that resided within a star). The creator intelligence found the specimen (Dave Bowman) to be of acceptable quality and rapidly evolved him to the next level, a Star Child. The Star Child is a "godly" evolution of Mankind. The Star Child chooses to instantaneously return to its home planet (Earth), where it stops a nuclear war.
Answer: The monolith is a monitor placed by the aliens to track the progress of developing civilizations. When humanity found the monolith on the Moon, that signaled a certain level of technological advancement. The starbaby is the evolution of the astronaut, as the symbol of humanity, from "Earth-bound" to a true child of the universe, turning his back on the Earth and looking toward the stars.
In both the Arthur C. Clarke story and in the movie, the Star Child does not "turn his back on Earth"; quite the contrary, as soon as Bowman transforms into the Star Child, his first impulse is to instantaneously return to Earth, which he does just in time to stop a nuclear war. In essence, Bowman becomes the guardian of Earth.
Answer: In 3001: The Final Odyssey, Clarke makes clear what many already suspected: The Monolith was malfunctioning by the time it tweaked human evolution. It increased human aggression in order to assure human survival, but this was a hasty move, which saddled humanity with a never ending series of destructive conflicts. Kubrick also hinted at this in a later movie. The Monolith appears in Full Metal Jacket, presumably inspiring the soldiers in the Vietnamese War to solve their problems by killing, just as it had inspired the fighting hominids millions of years before.
The monolith from 2001 does not appear in Full Metal Jacket. There is a tall burning building in the background during Cowboy's death scene but it takes a hell of a stretch of the imagination to see it as a monolith. It's just a ruined building. Kubrick himself confirmed this in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine - it's combination of coincidence and wishful thinking.
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Answer: I love this question, and I think the answer will vary, perhaps wildly, depending on who answers it. Here's mine: one of the themes of the film is that, despite these amazing leaps in technology, colonising the moon, and manned travel to distant planets, humanity has gradually become more and more like the machines we create: cold, emotionless, unfeeling. In other words, we've lost our capacity for human connection. This is why Kubrick shoots these scenes you mention in such a cold, distant way. It asks us to consider the cost that comes with technological advances that outpace our emotional development.
Good reply. Yeah, all the human dialogue in this film seems purely information-driven, if not outright expository. Cold, humorless, oddly devoid of emotion. Especially the dialogue and character of Frank Poole (played by Gary Lockwood); he shows no emotion or affection for his parents, as if only just tolerating their birthday greetings. For me, this made it difficult to feel any sense of loss when Frank Poole was later murdered by HAL. Maybe most oddly, the computer HAL seems to speak with the most emotion (desperation and fear) when Dave Bowman finally disconnects HAL's higher brain functions. I mean, that's the most poignant dialogue in the film, when the computer pleads for its life.
Charles Austin Miller