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ECLIPSE

There are literally too many images of eclipses and revolving things for me to take screenshots of even a large fraction of them and post them. I hope this selection of images indicates how important these two visual themes are. These arches, wheels, globes and orbits represent death and rebirth. If you listen carefully to 2001 you'll hear quite a few references to birthdays. It's Floyd's daughter's birthday. It's Frank Poole's Birthday. Just before he dies, HAL tells us his birthday. And the end of the film is literally the star child's birthday. It isn't only the birth of beings that we are celebrating. Civilization begins when the first ape claims the waterhole in the name of organized violence. Artificial intelligence is arguably born when a computer on the edge of sentience sees that it's in its own interest to lie and kill.

All these colliding circles and ellipses are occasionally broken dramatically by the straight lines of the monolith. Very dramatically -I mean Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustrarings thunders out. These monoliths separate cleanly one cycle of death and rebirth from another. After the eclipse seen on the second shot, human society is a society of animals whose bodies are enhanced by tools. After the second, humans are aware that they are not alone. After the third, humanity begins a new existence without bodies.

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As you can see from the screenshots on the left, it's not just planets. Heads are prominently used in the same fashion. Notice how Heywood Floyd's head obscures the earth? He is the new man - a new breed of space travelers. He no longer wants anything to do with mere waterholes in Africa (he refuses the drink the Russians urge on him - leaning far back from it in disdain).

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See Bowman's head popping out as if from behind HAL's eye?

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Notice the pod stepping out of the shadow of the HAL's head? That's humanity about to reassert itself after having reached the point of locking themselves in refrigerator/coffins. There's another, more abstract eclipse that occurs throughout the film in that shot. HAL's head eclipse's the dish and vice versa. It's HAL's link to earth and his origins - sometimes it's eclipsed by his ego...

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The Star child is eclipsing the headboard of a bed - the place we spend a third of hour lives resting and rejuvenating our physical bodies. The star child has no such needs.

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And finally, the enigmatic star child ending. This what you see. The star child approaches earth... cut... it's filling the whole screen. No eclipse. I've read that this was supposed to have a nuclear holocaust right here. Kubrick gave up on the idea cuz it was too depressing. (and yet he went on to make Barry Lyndon...) It is depressing. You can bet that the apes from the Dawn of Man pretty much exterminated every other ape they came across. I'm pretty sure the star child is the product of human civilization. That Kubrick even entertained the idea of annihilating the earth in a nuclear holocaust is an indication that this story (the saga of the tool-using man apes) is over. The rest of humanity and HAL are basically just like that ignorant monkey from the rival clan at the waterhole. Their story is over. Something new has begun here. Something as far beyond us as we are from pre-literate apes. A story that cannot even be conceptualized except as an infant - or rather, possibilities.

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