Still great after all these years

Rating: 9/10 (1 April 2007)

Four million years ago, a small band of hominids scrabbles out a living on the African veldt. They face extinction. Then one morning, they awaken to the presence in their midst of a 4-meter-high monolith of unknown origin and purpose. The monolith subtly alters their behavior, leading them to the concept of tool use, by which they defeat a rival band. Violence assures survival. Jump forward to the year 2001. There are two bases on the Moon, one American and one Soviet. In the course of a magnetometric lunar survey, Americans scientists discover a large magnetic anomaly below the surface of the crater Tycho. When excavated, it turns out to be---you guessed it---a monolith, just like the one that, unbeknownst to the Americans, appeared on Earth four million years before. Except for a single, extremely powerful, radio transmission aimed at Jupiter, the monolith remains completely inert, its composition, origin and purpose a total mystery. The Americans undertake a mission to Jupiter. The spaceship Discovery carries the pilot, Dave Bowman, the copilot, Frank Poole, and the 3-man survey team, who are in cryosleep for most of the voyage. The Discovery is run by a powerful supercomputer, an HAL 9000, known as "Hal." Only Hal knows the true mission objective, and the conflict between his instructions to provide totally correct service and his instructions to keep the mission objective secret from the crew causes him to go "insane." He attempts to kill everyone in the crew, but Bowman manages to survive and to disable Hal while still keeping the Discovery functional. Bowman reaches Jupiter space and discovers a huge monolith orbiting the planet, identical to the one on the Moon only much larger. He approaches the monolith in one of Discovery's EVA pods, and discovers that it is a Stargate. He is swept across unimaginable distances and then undergoes a transformation into the next stage of human evolution, a Star Child.
The New Yorker film reviewer called "2001" "some kind of a great film." How have the years treated it?
Technology: In the 1960s, big, one-of-a-kind computers were the norm, and it was natural to think that this would still be the case in 2001. It was not until the early 1970s that the first attempts were made to run factories, laboratories, power plants, etc., using a big central computer, and these were failures. The old mainframes turned out to be unreliable and prone to breakdowns. It was then that the first distributed small computers were tried, with much greater success. It would be 15 years before the first high-speed microprocessors would transform the computer world into what we have now. Also, a lot of the machines, cameras, displays and readouts that we see throughout the film use long-obsolete technology or simply never developed as they appear in the movie.
Culture: "2001" was a world in which technology, science and computers had drained the world of passion and pleasure. This was a predominant fear in the 1960s: The dehumanizing effects of impersonal technology and artificial intelligence. Of course, in the 21st century, the opposite has happened: We have adapted computers and communications to the expression, not the suppression, of our human foibles.
Science: Since the 1960s, the age of Robert Ardrey and "African Genesis," paleoanthropology has tended to discredit the notion that the crucial transition from hominid to human was the evolution of violent, predatory behavior as being too simplistic.
Business: Of course, Pan American Airways, the Bell Telephone Company, General Foods, and other companies whose logos we see in the film, that looked so convincing then, either no longer exist or have been transformed out of all recognition.
Politics: In "2001," both the USA and the USSR have lunar bases. Now, of course, the Soviet Union no longer exists, we have not been back to the moon since 1972, and space exploration is much more international than ever.
"2001" was co-written by director Stanley Kubrick and the great SF author Arthur C. Clarke. Youngsters used to modern CGI technology would do well to remember that "2001" was the very first science fiction film to have really believable special effects. Compare earlier "classic" SF films---e.g., "The War of the Worlds," "Forbidden Planet," and "This Island Earth"---and you'll see what I mean. "2001" dazzled us in the 1960s, and it has aged well. Although it is dated in many ways---something that seemed unimaginable when it was first released---it still tells a wonderful story of transcendental human transformation, which has been one of Clarke's favorite themes. It is still one of the masterpieces not just of science fiction film, but of cinema in general.