There's an entire website (complete with four-part video) dedicated to explaining the ins and outs of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi classic, and we couldn't possibly get into even a fraction of the analysis that's been devoted to the movie in the decades since its release. What we can do is offer Kubrick's own assessment of the ending, in which astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) comes into contact with an extraterrestrial monolith and goes through a bizarre succession of experiences—vast space travel, seeing himself at different ages, and finally being transformed into a floating space fetus. Even for the late '60s, it's pretty nutty stuff.
"In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny," Kubrick explained. "That is what happens on the film's simplest level."
In the next breath, however, he pointed out that 2001 concerns itself with "elements of philosophy and metaphysics" that "have nothing to do with the bare plotline," so whatever Kubrick's summary tells you about Bowman's fate, you can trust there's more to it—and that any extra meaning is entirely up to you. "The film becomes anything the viewer sees in it," he continued. "If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately, his mythological and religious yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded."
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