The greatest movie ever made

Rating: 10/10 (21 January 2006)

Yes, some people could argue with me that "2001: A Space Odyssey" isn't the greatest movie ever, but all the elements are here in order to provide an experience that challenges any comparison.
Almost a silent movie, "2001" is a unique trip into the unexplored areas of outer-space. But the film doesn't begin in the future, but in the far-away past. Director Stanley Kubrick depicts men at the ape stage, which existed 4 million years ago. That's maybe the most ancient representation of mankind ever presented. The ape make-up is so well done that we all could be confused. Just to say it, make-up artists weren't nominated to the Oscars, because the judges were all certain that these were real monkeys...
Parallels between ancient and future times include man's existence and wandering inside an hostile and dangerous world. And his need of evolving. But Kubrick puts his pessimist mood by showing us as unable of evolving by ourselves. We need outside intervention (aliens never shown) in order to accomplish our destiny.
Black monoliths are the objects used by the hidden aliens in order to make humans evolving. First time, ape-men become able of using bones as tools and weapons. Second time, world scientists create the space ship Discovery I for outer-space exploration and they hope that they will find the monolith's signification. The third one is a gate throughout space and time and the final one rises astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) to the next level.
But "2001" is a fantastic voyage into reflexion and meditation, which means that it's not everyone who's able of enjoying it. Those who expect that space should be used as a playground or as an extreme fight terrain will be strongly deceived when they see that space is only a background to man's research for his own existence and destiny.
"2001" is to cinema what "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is to music. Both items are the epitome of the 60's counterculture and there is a strong psychedelic mood that translates well on screen or on gramophone. The Star Gate sequence is the best example, with its surrealist sequences of geometrical colored motifs and abstract landscapes. But the themes reflect also the new cultural values which promote introspection and disputes over traditional values.
Realism is strongly flagrant. Especially in the sound process. Probably the only movie that really shows space as a fully empty place, Kubrick presents universe as a great black danger, with its desolated landscapes and dead, almost haunted atmospheres.
Kubrick wasn't an Oscar favorite, but he strongly deserves the Visual Effects Award that he received for "2001". Futuristic computers, spaceships, furniture and costumes are eye-catching and imaginative. But the best special FX of the movie (and perhaps of all time) are presented in the final twenty-five minutes. These are the spectacular and unbelievable slit-scan star-gate, which is a psychedelically colored gate towards time and space, and also the spatial events, such as the birth of a supernova.
The best character of the movie, surprisingly, is not a human being. It's HAL, the ultra-perfected computer that runs the Discovery spaceship. He's so obsessed by his quest for perfection that he wouldn't hesitate to get ridden of anyone who would threaten him. He also leads the viewer to ask himself/herself many questions: is it safe to create computers and machines that are more and more perfected? And do we depend on them? Questions, questions, questions... Answers, there aren't any. At least, they're not revealed. We have to figure them out by ourselves. And do not hope that a monolith will appear and give you an answer. In a time where psychedelic music would be the ultimate escape, "2001" was the symbol of a society that entered into a great phase of questions about itself and it still is today. That's the power and the possibilities of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece. "The Ultimate Trip" still is an adequate nickname and, with its unforgettable sequences, its gripping realism, its visually dazzling shots, its strongly meditative mood and its legacy beyond compare, "2001" is nothing else than the greatest movie ever made.