2001 (Score 2)

This reminds me of decoding Paul is dead messages on Beatles covers in college. None of the general thrust of 2001 is less than 31 years old, although the anagrams and hexagons may be new. It's like Homer's Odessey, and it says so in the title. (But let's not forget Leopold Bloom! Maybe Kubrick was a Joyce nut too). Zarathustra? Gee, ya think? Also Sprach Zarathustra is only the overpowering theme music, played over and over again. Man/machine symbiosis, is again, as plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante's face. It's Frankenstein, Prometheus etc. all over again. All of this is so plainly obvious that it can't possibly be news to nerds. Everyone who paid the slightest attention knew all this three decades ago. 2001 is one of the top movies ever made not because of these out front allegories, but because it uses these allegories to draw a picture that is a contemplation of consciousness, and it means just what you can get out of it, and unquestionably it means different things to different people. HAL is the murdering child/frankenstein. The sequels kinda cheapen the impact of HAL by explaining why he went nuts. Wasn't it a lot better as a Rorasch test to speculate why HAL went bad. (Star Trek TNG did a cute send up of this with Data/Lor) What does the aging of Bowman as he watches himself Buddah-like, evoke?