Like I said, I was pretty crazy about 2001... I still am, although maybe not with the same zeal, but certainly consider it one of the most important sci-fi films ever made and a real favorite.

I think films can be apreciated the way that Freud suggested that dreams can be interpreted: by their manifest or their latent content. In applying a manifest interpretation, the film (dream) is interpreted literally. Metaphors or other literary devices are laid aside for unadorned depiction; what you see is what you get. On the other hand, a latent interpretation uses metaphors and other devices to allude to a truth that lies beneath the action.

2001 is very metaphorical and uses lots of symbolism that has left many scholars still shaking their heads in disbelief and exasperated befuddlement. As an example, think about the end of the movie, when Bowman (the archer, the arrow, the penetrating object) sits at a table eating a meal. As he eats, his glass of wine falls and breaks. He looks up, and there's the Monolith. He stares. What is going on, here?

Although I cannot begin to fathom this silence, let me suggest that the breaking of the glass was representational of a break from the past, a break with familarity, and a beginning of a new life. In Jewish weddings, the a glass is broken by the (husband?), symbolizing a break from the old, a break from the former family, and an entrance into the new. This makes the entrance of the star-child, the embryo that floats high above the Earth at the end of the movie, more comprehensible: it is confirmation of Mankind's new beginning.

So, 2001 is a movie that takes some figuring. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot in the film that I find quite abstruse and will likely never get. On the other hand, I think a lot of people who are po'd with the film because it's "just weird", are probably using their own way of looking at the world to do so....