Despite the passage of nearly four decades...

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2006)

...Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (hereafter "2001") remains benchmark cinematic science fiction of the highest order. No serious cinemaphile can deny the majesty and beauty of this film, nor can they deny its unique position in cinema history. Much like earlier films such as "King Kong," the Kubrick masterwork ushered in a new age of film-making that paved the way not only for the giddy, fantastical, and profitable excitement of "Star Wars" (1977), a groundbreaker in its own right, but also an entire wave of "smart" films of speculative fiction, especially those involving machine intelligence. Think "Silent Running" and "Colossus: The Forbin Project," "Alien" and "Blade Runner" and "The Terminator," etal, right down to recent films like "AI" and "I, Robot" (which is admittedly based on an Asimov tale that pre-dates "2001," but never mind). All seem hardly possible without the trailblazing of "2001." All owe an inestimable debt to Kubrick's vision.
It's most peculiar writing about a film I've seen more than twenty times in a movie theater, including several times on a Cinerama screen, and uncounted times on VHS, Laserdisc, and DVD. I almost feel as if I know it so well that there's nothing left to say about it, and perhaps there's not a lot I can add to the reams of reviews posted here on the IMDb and elsewhere. Still, the film has been a favorite of mine ever since I first saw it over 35 years ago, so it deserves at least a mention in my IMDb comments folder, right? Right.
The impeccable Geoffrey Unsworth cinematography, the razor perfect editing of Ray Lovejoy, the immaculate production design, art direction, even the costuming; all illuminate the unmistakable vision of director/producer/co-writer Stanley Kubrick, one of the undeniable masters of film direction. More, "2001" is very much a piece of the Sixties/Seventies zeitgeist, an indelible cultural meme that spoke to the deepest yearnings and loftiest ambitions of those idealistic and turbulent years. The film's only real flaws now are the unavoidable anachronisms and its ambitious calendar of interplanetary travel. PanAm went belly up along with Bell, and it's a good five years since that mundane tic of the Gregorian calendar (millennial ignorance notwithstanding) and we're still a long way from Mars, let alone Jupiter and The Beyond. But "2001" still exerts the same power, still evokes the same sense of awe at the mystery and majesty of the universe, as well as our place within it.
The film tells a fairly simple story in a somewhat oblique fashion: Humanity, nudged by an alien artifact, discovers tools, or more specifically weapons, and in the blink of one of the most famous jump cuts in cinematic history, masters technology, which leads inevitably to an alien beacon planted beneath the surface of Luna. What comes after, in a third act so lengthy it begins before intermission, is the true meat of Kubrick and Clarke's story, and the welcome introduction of one of the most compelling and thought-provoking cinematic villains ever created: the HAL9000 computer.
I could fill out the rest of this commentary just talking about HAL, but will spare the wandering eye. Suffice to say, imnsho, HAL is the true protagonist of Act Three (HAL's tragic error of pride leads to his own destruction), but already I digress...
Kubrick's film works so beautifully because he prompts his audience to think for itself, and does it primarily without words. Not to spite Clarke's simultaneously-written novel, which is worthy science fiction in its own right, but Kubrick's command of cinematic storytelling connects on a much more visceral, indelible level, deftly showing rather than telling. A thousand words of prose could not match the grandeur of "The Blue Danube" wedded to the intricate beauty of a shuttle docking with an orbital space station, or communicate the inherent humor of a man contemplating a zero-gravity toilet, nor could they match the psychedelically effective rendition of interstellar transport at the act's climax. Hard-nosed realists might argue that the provocative ending to Clarke's novel ("...but he would think of something.") is more satisfying than Kubrick's somewhat baroque and mystic one, but the message is clear: Man has risen above his darker nature (personified by HAL, and also Moon-Walker, the two characters who commit murder) and been transformed. Into what? Well, that's for you to decide.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" is without question a film that demands to be seen on the big screen, the bigger the better. I can't recommend viewing it that way highly enough, though I imagine most anyone reading this will have slim opportunity to do so again until it enjoys an anniversary theatrical re-release of one denomination or another. A nice 40th sounds good to me!
Edit: Okay, at this point (4.17.11), I'll settle for a 50th anniversary viewing.