I don’t think anyone fully understood the ending to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; the film where the blessed Star Child takes off into outer space with the Mona Lisa smile, heading back to Earth in a bubble as if to indicate some kind of renewal. The rest of us gawked at it with confusion, feeling somewhat dejected (or a little doltish) but the film may be easier to interpret nowadays as Interstellar and Arrival provided insights on the same theme.
Let us analyze the film as a Kubrick stand alone work rather than an extension of Arthur C. Clarke’s short story, The Sentinel, so that we can fully grasp the conclusion once and for all. It’s not that hard to figure out, but when you think of it, any conclusion that’s supposed to be an evolutionary leap forward should be incomprehensible to contemporary filmgoers. Otherwise, the writing is just a hack job to say the least. Fluff.
To be blunt, the last sequence of events where Commander Bowman witnesses different versions of himself imply that his consciousness is growing into a state of timelessness, meaning that he’s no longer experiencing time as a sequential event. He’s evolved into an holistic human being who lives beyond his original consciousness into a bigger world where time’s properties are different.
We all take time for granted, for sure. We know that we’re going to die some day, but apart from that dismal reality, we simply don’t slow down enough to realize how the consciousness of time is so distinctly human. Our existential experience is petered out, second by second, into tiny morsels of existence like a paint by numbers book for first-time living beings in an energy-swirling universe.
Einstein, Kant and even St. Augustine had something to say about time. Some called it an arrow moving forward while others claimed it was a property with physical constraints. Regardless, we’re sequential animals who move from into the future with little to no regard of the past or future except for memories and imagination.
The biggest clue which indicates how Bowman evolved into a timeless consciousness is in the second apparition of himself. In this version, he seems capable of foretelling a glass falling on the table without being able to stop it. It’s as if this Bowman is waking to the reality of time and can sense it beyond his present moment. The next shot is an older Bowman who sees a fetus, shiny and brightly wrapped in a bubble, floating in front of him in lieu of the monolith. Both the oldest and youngest Bowman symbolizes the closing of the loop between the beginning and the end of his earthly life on this plane of existence. They are now just one experience instead of many throughout a lifetime, previously unravelled second per second or by the minute within a lifetime.
Bowman has transcended his sequential consciousness into a timeless one. Time has different properties and can be experienced all at once. Think Dr. Manhattan from The Watchmen.
This concept is probably easier to digest after films like Interstellar and Arrival which played on the same theme. Both showed time as being fluid, running backwards and forwards, like an ocean that could be crossed within the mental-physical landscape. This feat happened with technology. In 2001, it’s specifically about human consciousness. That’s why Hal9000 couldn’t make use of the monolith as Hal could imitate consciousness bwithout actually have one. No evolutionary upgrade for our AI robot friends, it seems.
So, there you have it. The ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey can be finally laid to rest. Commander Bowman’s transcends time to become timeless as one could easily deduce with the last scene before the Star Child. Just remember that timelessness doesn’t mean immortal. Bowman’s existence should still be inextricably linked to the physical universe.