Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick take us to an unforgettable journey into space and beyond

Rating: 9/10 (17 December 2008)

The story begins from the dawn of man, from the prehistoric era when the apes ruled the Earth.A rectangular monolith is being discovered by some of them, an object placed by aliens.In the distant future the evolution has taken the man into space.Another monolith is being found from the surface of the moon.In the year 2001 S.S.Discovery with its crew, captains Dave Bowman and Frank Poole and their computer HAL-9000 are on their way to Jupiter to find out what alien force is watching us.After a while HAL starts causing some trouble...Arthur C. Clarke, who we sadly lost at the age of 90 last March came up with the story of 2001.He was inspired by a short story called "The Sentinel" he had written in 1948.Clarke was such a great science fiction author and this is such a fantastic story.Stanley Kubrick, who we lost in 1999 at the age of 70 made Clarke's story into a film.And what a great film it is.The cast is very good.Keir Dullea plays the part of Dr.Dave Bowman.Gary Lockwood is Dr.Frank Poole.Douglas Rain provides the voice of HAL.William Sylvester plays Dr.Heywood R. Floyd.Vivian Kubrick, Stanley's daughter is seen as his daughter he calls squirt.Margaret Tyzack is Elena.There's a lot of classical music used in this movie that works brilliantly.There's "The Blue Danube" by Johan Strauss there.GyÃ¶rgy Ligeti was behind most of that fantastic music.This is a movie that's hard for you to fully understand.Even Arthur C. Clarke once said: "If you understand '2001' completely, we failed.We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."I've seen this movie a few times, four perhaps and it hasn't totally opened to me yet.But nevertheless it's a very cool movie experience.2001: A Space Odyssey came 40 years ago, in 1968.After all these years it still looks great.