Lofty ideals, told in a lofty manner.

Rating: 4/10 (8 July 2002)

I was at first enamored with 2001. I enjoyed the apes scene, and I could grasp the evolutionary concepts. Then the movie goes on a trip to AllegoryLand, and I'm at a loss. Also, Kubrick, whose other films I generally love, decides to absolutely torture the viewer with gruelingly long scenes, such as taking 45 seconds to show a capsule opening a door with a mechanical arm, or a full 5 minutes to show a guy silently floating outside the ship to fix something. Kubrick's exact same message could've been gotten across in 1:45 minutes, but instead he takes 2:15, thanks mostly to unnecessarily long scenes of showing mundane acts.
No, I'm not a person with a short attention span. There are plenty of three, and even four and five hour films that I adored (Gettysburg was around 5 hours I think). I just ask that something be happening, if I wanted to look at still pictures and listen to classical music, I'd go to a museum.

No, I'm not an action whore either. There are plenty of slow, and thought-provoking films I've enjoyed. But in my opinion, if the average viewer has no friggin' clue what your point is, the film has failed. I had a wonderful English professor in college that taught us that it's not how fanciful you can write, or how many impressive words you can squeeze into your text .. *good writing is about how well you can convey your ideas*. I feel the same is true of filmmaking. All the great philosophies and lofty ideals are useless if not conveyed in a way that doesn't require a full text to be understood.