I am speechless...

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2004)

Having just seen this fantastic film, I'm left puzzled, amazed, impressed and in complete and utter awe of Kubrick's cinematic genius. I had not expected anything to impress me as much as A Clockwork Orange, but I was pleasantly surprised. While I do find A Clockwork Orange to be a better film, I must say that this comes incredibly close... and what determines this might be the fact that, while I fully understood A Clockwork Orange(at least after my second viewing) I'm quite confused by this film. I don't entirely understand the ending, and a few various things throughout the film, but that doesn't lower my score. Not the slightest. Do you know why? Well, partly because Arthur C. Clarke, the co-writer of the screenplay once said: "If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered." And partly because the very visuals of this film warrant a perfect rating of 10. I would be lying if I claimed to ever have seen such beautiful visuals as the ones throughout the film, and in particular the very end... stunning. Simply stunning. Something that I found interesting was how many times Kubrick simply used the visuals to tell the story(as opposed to dialog) and how often he simply let us enjoy the sight of the spacecrafts or the planets... instead of giving us a few unsatisfying quick cuts like a typical Hollywood director would have done. Kubrick is in no hurry to tell us this story... in fact, he wants us to relax and just be whisked away on this journey. He sets a mood like no other director has ever done, and he never breaks this mood. His use of music, while not as deliciously ironic as it is in A Clockwork Orange, is great. There are two scenes which have been referenced so many times, both content-wise and music-wise, in so many different mediums that I doubt anyone can keep track of how many parodies or references there are to them... this is, of course, the famous Dawn of Man scene, and a recurring external space scene. The plot is great. The pacing is good, considering that it's Kubrick... usually, his films are slower, but this one never really felt that slow. The characters are well-written and credible. The acting is all great. The music/score is great. The visuals of the film are amazing. I know I'm praising every aspect of the film here, but I truly think it is that good; it's one of the greatest films I've ever seen, and definitely the best visually. Finally, I'll just mention that normally I hate science fiction that deals(even slightly) with extraterrestrial activity/life and space travel. I recommend this film to any fan of high-quality science fiction and any fan of Stanley Kubrick. 10/10