Where last week I felt somewhat underwhelmed by the film in question, this week’s film is one of my all time favorites. 2001 A Space Odyssey is more than just one of my favorite films of all time – it also inspired most of my favorite films (both this, and two of its direct successors, Alien and Star Wars, are all easily in my top five).
To really drive home the point – I’ve been struggling to cry, as an emotional release, for the past month or so. This movie made be cry at least twice (I won’t say at what moments). So I can say that this movie and I are speaking similar languages.
I have a lot of thoughts about this movie – some ideas I’ve heard and internalized about what “point” it might be trying to make, for instance. But I think the star of this movie, Hal, deserves attention. As I pointed out in a comment, he is more human than any of the humans in this movie. David seems to show emotion only twice, for instance; first when Hal won’t open the pod bay doors, and second when he’s deactivating Hal. By contrast, Hal’s very first lines are laden with emotional weight and careful emphasis. A friendly deliberateness that quickly becomes disconcerting and then threatening as he becomes more violent.
Let’s take for granted that the movie is a commentary about human evolution and improvement over time (this is debatable but for the sake of argument indulge me). Given this interpretation, what are we to make of Hal’s almost over humanity? Have the humans in the movie evolved past such displays, and Hal is a cruel reminder of our past? Well, no, I think. The bone weapon is shown to be analogous to our satellites. It doesn’t seem we’ve moved past our violence so much as evolved it, too. I think Hal is instead meant to be our successor. Hal is smarter, faster, more careful, and on top of all that, more human than any modern human. I’ve had a silly thesis bobbing around in my head that if we do develop a near human A.I., it would be in some effect the children of all who help to make it – a sort of next step in human evolution in a moral if not literal sense. I think Hal is one version of this, while David’s space baby is the contrasting version. What to make of that contrast, I have no idea. I guess I have to watch it again in five or so years.
I think this is dead on. I’m curious as to the function that cruelty will play in the subsequent decades and centuries. The way that both HAL and Bowman inflict cruelty on one another is in a very detached, “git ‘er done” kind of way. HAL doesn’t bear any substantial ill will towards the astronauts, he simply cannot risk the possibility that they will kill him, thus cutting this incredibly important mission short.