Stanley [Kubrick] was not religious, but, like most of us, speculated in the face of the unknowable, hidden in an endless universe in which our lititle planet may not play any role at all. But it’s all we have – it is a world to us. (Christiane Kubrick: Notes for 2001:A Space Odyssey Live, 7 October 2013
Seeing the film twelve years after it was supposed to take place, there is a certain awareness of what did not happen: Pan Am flying shuttles to international, space stations that look like airports as opposed to the more prosaic ISS now in orbit, and sentient computers. That is, however, not really what the film is about. I realised that it is a mythic story of our evolution and, as such, the form is its least important aspect, even if I do really like the form.
2001 seems to me to be about the possibilities of being human within the context that we find ourselves. This context is changing and with those changes, the possibilities also change. The film shows that when the context changes- earth to space, new tools and new strategies are needed. What was useful before: tools, is now dangerous: HAL.
