One of the boldest films ever made

Rating: 10/10 (15 February 2014)

Joe's current Ranking: 4/1034 2001 is a film of monumental ambition, it is really a work of metaphor and philosophical ideas represented through images. That description may be more common in short films, but to describe a feature film made for general release that fits this brief is very rare. I often think how such a film could be made now, in the corporate age of cinema. The answer of course is that it couldn't be; its budget and scope are too big for an independent and its ideas too avant garde and unpopular for a mainstream studio. Imagine trying to sell to a group of executives a film which begins with half an hour of cavemen and no speech, and ends with another half hour of no speech, hypnotic imagery and loud classical music. It would be like Marcel Duchamp pitching a new MacDonald's logo! But enough nostalgia, onto the film. I think what I admire most is the attempt to tell a story that is so complex, the story of human history, of our struggle towards something – we know not what – but it is the thing we have mastered technology, language, society, culture and science to try to achieve. In the film it is represented by the monolith, it moves us towards our goal as we try to understand it. The monolith is the question, the why, the how of life. The cavemen are mystified by it, and their solution is the tool. In the near future, space travellers are propelled onwards by it, and then eventually, it is no longer a question of exploring physical space, but transcending it, becoming something more than flesh and bone, allowing consciousness to achieve its great ambition. I would even suggest that all this is in itself a metaphor for the individual search for understanding.
Technically, the film is masterful and opened new doors for those who had great visions to put onto the screen. The spinning bone turning into the spaceship is an iconic image, as is the monolith. The use of music is also masterful, in many scenes, especially later in the film, the music becomes the main character, you hear the overture building and it's like the main character returning.
And of course there is what is often most remembered in the film, but I would suggests actually operates more as a secondary story, the part of HAL 9000. I recall on first viewing not understanding why this was part of the film, it seemed that there was this great thesis about human endeavour, and then a subplot horror story about a computer gone insane. But I had missed the point, it was still the story of human endeavour, this was the second act, the complicating action, where humanity puts it faith in the machine (as it had done with that bone), only for it to go wrong. I still consider this to be one of the most ambitious films ever made, and I strongly recommend it to anyone.