2001: A Cinematic Triumph

Rating: 10/10 (20 August 2005)

Great movies always have great quotes. Gone With the Wind has, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", Casablanca has, "Here's looking at you kid...", and The Godfather had, "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse...". All of these lines show emotion and give the movie it's tempo. Yet one of the most famous lines of all time comes from a movie that has very little dialogue. "Open the pod bay doors, HAL..." This is the line from 2001: A Space Odyssey that made AFI's 100 years...100 Movie Quotes list, enshrining all of those lines we keep saying long after watching the movie.
In Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick takes us on an incredible voyage from the dawn of man to space age. We see how man has evolved and keeps evolving. The movie starts out with an overture and then we enter a barren landscape. The only life appears to be a few boars and the creatures in focus...the apes. When a black monolith appears in the middle of their clan, they begin to evolve ever so slightly just by discovering the first weapon...the club. From here Kubrick zooms us to Earth's orbit.
Here we meet up with Dr. Heywood Floyd, a man who's mission is to see what is going on at the lunar. What they discover is another black monolith like the one the apes came into contact with. Figuring out that it came from Jupiter, we now climb aboard the vessel heading their with Dr. Dave Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole. Also on the ship are more scientists and explorers. They are in hibernation, being kept alive by the on board computer, HAL 9000. HAL is everything a ship needs. It guides the crew, helps them, talks with them, and even connects with them. It can conduct interviews and just about anything a ship and its crew needs. The HAL 9000 series is a foolproof machine that seems to be the perfect unit for the job. The only problem might be that it is too smart and can actually...feel. When a piece of equipment malfunctions due to unknown causes, Dave and Frank question HAL's method for solving the problem. They feel as if it is working against them and the mission. It seems that HAL knows something that they don't. This is the start of a whole different problem for Dave and Frank.
This film is a standout in a genre that is full of gems. 2001: A Space Odyssey shows incredible achievements in Special Effects, winning and Oscar for Best Effects in 1969. The quality I most admire of the film is how real it appears to be. The flow of dialogue, of which there is very little of, sounds like something you'd hear if you worked on a space station. It sounds at times like everyday life. The cinematography is fantastic. Much like all Kubrick films it has the Stanley Kubrick quality in the way it is presented. It is very original and fresh.
Kubrick's direction is so well crafted. This is by far one of his best pieces of work. He has 9 movies on IMDb's Top 250 list which is more than half of all the films he has made. 2001: A Space Odyssey will open your eyes in a way you can't explain. Kubrick's camera direction, musical selection, and overall timing of the movie is perfect. It's a movie light-years ahead of it's time.