Transcendent Imagery

Rating: 10/10 (5 November 2001)

There is a school of thought out there that pooh-poohs the work of Stanley Kubrick, and specifically 2001: A Space Odyssey (along with Felini's 8 1/2, Roeg's Walkabout, any just about any film by Cocteau, Gilliam or David Lynch) as naively emphasizing the importance of screen visuals (and, in the case of Kubrick, soundtrack) above the coherent exposition of the film's storyline or the filmmaker's ultimate message. In essense, the knock on Kubrick is that he focuses too much on surface and images.
Such criticisms are wholly off the mark, of course, because cinema is an inherently visual medium where dialogue and other forms of exposition will always take a back seat to the image on the screen. The genius of Kubrick in 2001 is that he has the confidence to let his pictures do the talking for him - and they prove more eloquent than 99.9999% of the scripts out there.

Now, the trick about a cinema of images is that it takes a little bit more time to sink in that your standard expository crime drama. The solution won't be spoon fed to you by Peter Falk or some lesser stand-in during the final scene, and you'll need some time to mull over what you've seen and reach your own conclusions. In short, this is not a film for the impatient. But, if you give the film some time, come to it with an open mind and (most importantly) take the time afterwards to think about the precise meaning of what you just witnessed, viewing the images of 2001 can become the same sort of transcendent experience that you might experience listening to a great Mozart symphony, viewing the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre for several hours, or peering into a majestic and humbling landscape such as the Grand Canyon.
Not many films can be said to have accomplished that.
If you haven't yet seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, I'd strongly recommend that you give it a try.