Word: bowmans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...attempting to re-enter the ship from the pod he has used to retrieve Poole's corpse, Bowman must improvise for the first time, ad-lib emergency procedures to break-in against HAL's wishes. His determination is perhaps motivated by the first anger he has shown, and is certainly indicative of a crucial re-assertion of man over machine, again shifting the film's balance concerning the relationship between man and tool. In a brilliant and indescribable sequence, preceded by some stunning low-angle camera gyrations as Bowman makes his way toward HAL's controls, the man performs...
...Bowman's complex act parallels that of the australopithicus: his use of the pod ejector to re-enter the craft was improvisational, the mechanism undoubtedly designed for a different purpose--this referring to the use of bone as weapon-tool. Finally in committing murder, Bowman has essentially lost his dehumanization and become an archetypal new being: one worthy of the transcendental experience that follows. For the last part of the film, we must assume Bowman an individual by virtue of his improvised triumph over the complex computer...
LEFT alone in the space ship, Bowman sees the monolith slab floating in space in Jupiter's atmosphere and takes off in a pod to follow it; knowing by now the properties of the pod, we can conjure images of the mechanical arms controlled by Bowman reaching to touch the monolith as did the australopithicines and the humans. The nine moons of Jupiter are in orbital conjunction (a near-impossible astronomical occurrance) and the monolith floats into that orbit and disappears. Bowman follows it and enters what Clarke calls the time-space warp, a zone "beyond the infinite" conceived cinematically...
...monolith has previously guided man to major evolutionary and technological progression, it leads Bowman now into a realm of perception man cannot conceive, an experience unbearable for him to endure while simultaneously marking a new level in his progress. The frozen shots intercut with the light sequences show, debatably, Bowman's horror in terms of perception and physical ordeal, and his physical death: the last of many multi-colored solarized close-ups of his eye appears entirely flesh-colored and, if we are justified in creating a color metaphor, the eye is totally wasted, almost subsumed into a pallid flesh...
...this is not, as Clarke suggests in Life, the end of an Ahab-like quest on the part of men driven to seek the outer reaches of the universe. Bowman is led into the time warp by the monolith. The moon monolith's radio signals directed toward Jupiter were not indicative of life as we know it on Jupiter, but were a roadmap, in effect, to show Bowman how to find his way to the monolith that guides him toward transcedent experience...