Consciouness as grasping makes intuitive if not etymological sense because we created civilization with tools. But Freud's theory of the origins of consciousness make much more sense to me.

I humbly submit this:

Freud theorized preconscious man lived in relative harmony, as mammals did, but that eventually it was the absence of a caregiver that caused anxiety in all human offspring. Absence, for reasons such as leaving to procreate elsewhere or extended hunting trips, death, disease etc. (he preferred the sex explanation of course) is the existential sense of the ultimate caretaker.

Shit, the caretaker is gone! What to do? Anxiety gave birth to and shapes our civilization. Does it not? Thus consciousness is formed as a response to the question- What to do? children crying in abandon. the mother's coo. the birth of language.

as a fish cannot see the water it is swimming in, the conscious mind does not live in the anathema that proceeds it.

Thus consciousness along the way, backtracks to 'discover' free will and the paradigm of ethics- what to do. All along dealing with anxiety by civilizing- farming rather than chasing food or monogamy to polygamy to keep the extended family intact, controlling death and disease etc. As anxiety recedes via 'civilization' consciousness fills its new free time with philosophy. What to do? The very place it started.

Nietzsche credits Socrates with the hyper intellectualism and ethics of western culture. He viewed this as a great failure of mankind- giving up the aesthetic life of attic greece for the ethical one of Socrates, which we embrace to this day. I do enjoy the irony of self-righteous liberals condoning the ethics of the right with their own scientific constructs (which N also condoned as dehumanizing) when the real liberals (meaning free thinkers) are to this day artists and artisans. They are our only hope as we try to repair our extended families.

As far as the movie, it lends itself to other interpretations. The monolith is strange, singular, overwhelming, like anxiety resulting in one of many responses such as violent action.

Ethical constructs, law/justice, what to do, explain the second image- it's value being a work of art in itself and a life spent creating art not condoning others.