Great, but not perfect

Rating: 9/10 (23 August 2005)

2001-a space odyssey" is an excellent sci-fi film, an amazing achievement of imagination and philosophical/existential motives that was nominated for an Oscar for best director and screenplay, but it's still not a masterpiece. Stanley Kubrick was without doubt a great director, but he was almost never emotionally connected with his characters- actually he practically didn't care about them- which resulted in a cold mood throughout his stories. His philosophy was This happens because it's interesting ", but in other films ( La Strada", Being There", The Graduate", Kareshi Kanojo no Jijyou") the philosophy was This happens because it's magic".
2001" is an unique experiment. Actually, it's almost something Jean-Luc Godard would have loved to make. It's stripped of any kind of action, suspense, emotion, humor or story, and the only thing it has is style. But what a great style it has. The first half an hour has no dialog and shows prehistoric apes who learned to use bones as tools/weapons after an encounter with an mysterious monolith. By using tools, their intelligence progressed and eventually evolved them into humans. In 2001 Astronauts started a mission to find that Monolith near Jupiter.
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The Monolith is a symbol of the highest ideal, inspiration for humans, but it's limits are always beyond reach. It influenced the human mentality, but after the invention of tools it moved, disappeared from Earth. And after the astronaut Bowman made contact with him, the Monolith reacted by putting him in a ( time? ) portal ( showed by an amazing visual style, especially memorable in the slide show" of lights ) and transporting him into a human zoo", a normal, Earth looking room where he made himself comfortable. When Bowman became old, the Monolith transformed him into an ever higher being, maybe his own, and brought him back to Earth where the next step of evolution could start. Did the Monolith have pity with him? It would have been very interesting to hear some sort of conversation between Bowman and him, but that didn't happen. Also, unfortunately, Bowman had almost no character development. He was the main character and Kubrick took more interest of the HAL computer than him, but that's not important. 2001" is a fantastic film, but it's not flawless. It takes a great deal of concentration to watch it, and sometimes its just simply- dare I say it?-pretentious and boring. Such a big story about human progress could have been more entertaining, but it's still a big story. And making such a thin, allegorical story work really is art.
Grade: 9/10