Note On A Shot From "2001: A Space Odyssey"
How Humanity Got From The Bone To The Spaceship
For me, this cut —
— is greatly enriched by one shot that occurs a couple minutes earlier and is one of my favorite shots in The Dawn Of Man sequence. Here it is:
It’s an understated shot—calm, quiet, static—seemingly insignificant and presented almost in passing, but in my mind it suggests how humanity gets from the bone to the spaceship.
I like to think that the imagination of the genius ape who first conceived to use the bone as a tool (referred to in the screenplay and novel as Moon-Watcher) only extends so far, and that while Moon-Watcher is hailed by his tribe as the greatest scientific mind in history, he fails to innovate on the design or invent anything new, and soon the tribe develops a fixed attitude about the once-revolutionary idea that a bone can be a club. As they once believed a bone is a bone and nothing more, they now believe a bone can be a club and nothing more.
But with each new generation comes a new wave of curious, intelligent children who are naive to, disdainful of, or otherwise unencumbered by the stifling orthodoxies and assumptions of past generations.
Maybe the curious ape-child takes the bone and grinds up some seeds with it, and voila: now a bone can be both a club and a pestle. Technology has advanced. Humanity is one step closer to the spaceship. Now iterate for millions of years.
