A ballet in space

Rating: 8/10 (10 January 2004)

Surely the oddest blockbuster ever made, '2001: A Space Odyssey' is a testament both to the remarkable ambition of its director, Stanley Kubrick, and also to the spirit of an age. Unlike almost every other science fiction film before or since, Kubrick chooses to play it slow, building an atmosphere instead of spoiling us with action: spaceships (presumably plastic models, in an age preceding computer-made effects) dance ballets while the phenomenon of zero-gravity is represented in a manner that would surely have been familiar to M. C. Escher. With immense audacity, Kubrick allows us almost no dialogue for the first half an hour (except for a few words spoken by, of all people, Leonard Rossiter!); and throughout the film, he conspires masterfully against his audience, daring to keep us in the dark about what is really going on. It does have to be said that the ending inspires David Lynch style misgivings (the final revelation is only that there is no resolution); but as with a Lynch film, this film transcends the logical purpose of plot.
The film is also interesting because of when it was made, just before the first moon landings, in an age when optimism in technological progress was probably at its height. It's easy to laugh at the dated aesthetics of "the future" as rendered in this film, but also mistaken: the whole point is that '2001' is not set in "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" but in a medium term that is in fact already past. Man made it to the moon within just 24 years of inventing the jet engine: '2001' represents an imaginative peek beyond the limits our (then apparently rapidly expanding) horizons. That willingness to look beyond is what lifts the film above cheap futurology and keeps it fresh, even in 2004. Arguably Kubrick's best film.