10 Movie Answers Given YEARS Later
1. What Happens To Bowman At The End? - 2001: A Space Odyssey
The Question:
The end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey has been debated and dissected by fans and scholars alike for more than half a century, yet there's seemingly no concrete agreement on precisely what it all means.
We can objectively say that the film ends with Dr. Bowman (Keir Dullea) ending up in a large bedroom where he appears to age rapidly until he becomes an old man.
A monolith then appears at the foot of his bed, and as Bowman reaches out to it, he's transformed into the "Star Child," a foetus floating out in space.
But, uh, what does it all mean?
The Answer:
The theories are myriad, but back in 2018, almost exactly 50 years after 2001's release, an unaired 1980 interview with Kubrick was uncovered and published online, with Kubrick offering a surprisingly open and generous explanation of the ending:
"I've tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out... When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they're dramatised one feels it, but I'll try. The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.
When they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman... We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest."
While Kubrick certainly doesn't give an entirely concrete account of the ending, and audiences are free to retain their own interpretations, it is fascinating to hear from the enigmatic filmmaker's own mouth what he was going for.