Mind Bogglingly Brilliant

Rating: 10/10 (18 April 2006)

I know there are others who despise this movie, and I can understand why. We're not all the same and therefore do not expect the same "output" from every movie we watch. Sometimes when I sit down to a movie, I don't just want to be entertained - I want it to ask me questions, to raise my curiosity and place my thoughts somewhere they haven't been before.
2001 has been the ultimate in providing this. From the very beginning, ie. the "black nothingness", it is making you wonder, making you use your imagination, filling you with a mixture of hope and of dread. Kubrick was an intelligent director and wanted to make you "add" to the atmosphere of his films with your imagination. He couldn't stand putting it all on a plate for you. In that respect he was a poet as well as a director.
I first saw this film after I first saw Star Wars, and although Star Wars blew me away as a child with it's rendition of space and it's visual effects - it paled in comparison to Kubrick's space-scapes. There's no speeding crafts and explosions with battle music, there's gentle pace and movement with Strauss' Blue Danube waltzing through your senses. These combinations of visual and aural stimulation sucked me in as a kid and still do when I watch it today. I know the visual effects are dated today, but I can still admire their beauty and craft.
After watching this film, Kubrick became a genius to me, and I continue to wonder at his movies still.
I'm not going into a dissection of 2001, but in summary it still raises questions (more so than answers, and that's the point!), and creates so much intrigue in our own humanity and evolution - more so than any other movie has or probably ever will.
Whether you think you will hate this film, you still have to watch it in my opinion. It will give you something to take away whether you like it or not. I wish there were more mainstream movies like this. Hollywood is getting very dull...