Great effects, great pacing, great acting, great movie!

Rating: 10/10 (13 August 2007)

If there's one thing the general mainstream movie audience don't have, it's patience. They want their movies fast, loud, tightly edited and a storyline so complicated and tangled up, it just might strangle you. This is evident from this year's block-busters such as Spiderman 3, At World's End, and Transformers, all of which display the traits stated above. I was growing sick of it, so in this time I headed off Video Ezy to rent out (which I ended up buying for $13) 2001: A Space Odyssey. This movie is most definitely slow, requires patience and tops the above movies by far, despite being released 39 years ago. Although 2001 is regarded a great sci-fi movie and pops up around the middle of many Top 100 list of movies, it was first received as too slow as well as too incomprehensible. This is exactly what the writers and director wanted the audience to feel and knowing the audience's reception, it was a daring move to make the movie like they did.
To give you an idea of how slow the movie is, the first 25 minutes of the film and the last 23 minutes of the film contain no dialogue. This movie is not driven by story, it is done by beauty. Each shot is perfect, which is fitting given the director Stanley Kubrick was known as Hollywood's most perfectionist director (that is until I'll come in). Being the time-sets of this movie show us the past and future, but not the present, the audience is always being shown something unfamiliar, something that whilst the characters walk past casually, we admire the worlds we are being presented to. The waltz music also helps.
The set design and special effects are more talented and more cleverer than those of today. You may be surprised to hear me say this, with CGI and digital shots used aplenty in sci-fi and action movies of today. But today, they are usually only used to make something seem realistic. In 2001, they are used to make something look beautiful or awe-inspiring. Also given that film-makers didn't have a great array of special effects at their hand back in pre-Star Wars 1968. Clever film-making and camera trick needed to be used to convince audiences a pen was floating or a man was running along a wall. These techniques are better than CGI any day. As for the psychodelic light journey near the end of the movie, it needs to be seen to be believed. Such amazing light spectacles makes the audience feel like they're in some sort of sicko Disney-Land ride.
If you want some sort of storyline from 2001, then it comes sometime after the hour mark. Two spacemen, Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) are on their way to investigate Jupiter, whilst testing cryogenic sleeping. Their mission is guided by the super-computer HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain). HAL betrays the two space-men when they decide to unplug the super-computer. There's more, but I don't want to give too much away. It'd be better to watch this film without having a clue about the synopsis. Though I will talk about HAL. HAL is a polite, intelligent and possibly suave computer. He is supposedly reliable, but Dave and Frank soon find out the super-computer is not all he's cracked up to be. HAL is disturbingly human, much more so than Microsoft Sam. Though he may be able to betray, he has no conscience, does not fear consequence, which makes HAL one of the most interesting and most deadly and most parodied villains in cinema history (behind Darth Vader).
2001: A Space Odyssey is a movie to be seen in a dark room at night, on the best TV available and be prepared to have your retina the time of its life (come the 2 hour mark of the film). 2001 is lavish with brilliant effects, flawless set pieces and designs and every shot is shot to perfection. Remember to be patient during this film. Space travel is tedious for the characters in this film, but to you hopefully is something much more marvellous. Don't expect everything to come together in the end, because it doesn't. Have an open mind to this film and don't interpret it literally, like you would with the movies stated at the beginning of this review (with the exception of the beginning of At World's End. That was like a David Lynch film). 2001 is slow, but fast enough to present its beauty and creation. Rating: 9.6/10