Monoliths in space

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2011)

This movie is on my top ten least favorite movies of all time and I will gladly explain why. Before people start judging me as a critic and as a movie lover, I just want to point out that I think Stanley Kubrick is a great director. One of my favorite movies is Eyes Wide Shut. He has made many good movies, but this one for me was just a bore to watch. This is one of the movies that as a kid growing up, you hear people say it's one of the classics and that you have to see it to see the sheer brilliance portrayed on screen. I rented this and watched it with my parents who hadn't seen it either and had also heard things about it. We then proceeded to watch the agonizingly long movie that didn't have any dialogue in it until about an hour into it. I have heard many opinions of this movie, and one that I have recently watched had a guy say that this was not in fact a movie, but was just a bunch of random images put together on screen in order to get the audience to think for themselves. He commented that there is no story or screenplay and that there are no characters in this movie. That is a a basic summary of one man's opinion, and although I think he over-exaggerated, I do think he made some valid points. The only time I even came remotely to the point of being entertained was when HAL the computer showed up and started causing havoc. Another critic has proclaimed that the last bit of this film is considered be in the horror genre. This film is many things but it most certainly is not a horror movie. The monolith is the star (for lack of a better word) of this movie and plays the key role of confusing the audience and making us question human life and time itself. The last scene in this movie is very unique but the relevancy to anything in this movie is beyond me. I consider this film to be one huge question mark that Kubrick has given audiences. He hasn't written a finite story, he has simply given us the tools to create our own thoughts and opinions as to what is going on. Nothing in this movie is ever explained so don't expect any dialogue driven information for the simple fact that there is no dialogue at all minus maybe a page at the most. Kubrick is well known for being excellent at photographing movies and it shows here as the imagery is spectacular, yet has nothing to do with plot, characters or anything at all relevant to the film in general. Some consider this movie, Kubrick's masterpiece while others consider this the best movie ever made, while others consider it the worst movie ever made, while others consider it one of the worst movies ever made. In all of film history this is probably one of the top three if not THE most controversial film in motion picture history for the simple fact that there is no definite definition for anything here. If it sounds like I'm beating around the bush, it's because there is really no story to talk about and/or discuss here. If anything was to be described, astronauts are instructed to fly a few light-years to find this thing (the monolith) and find out what it is and what it does. Considering how the movie explains nothing and all the astronauts ever do is just stare at the damn thing, this a waste of time. For those that actually sat through this and wanted an explanation, there is a movie called 2010: The Year We Make Contact which has a plot and characters contributing to everything that happened in this movie. This movie (2001) is on the list of the movies you should see before you die, but honestly I don't see why because all that will happen most likely is that you'll watch it, wonder what the f**k just happened, then depending on your mood, you'll rent the sequel (if that's what you want to call it), and watch it. After that, you feel like you just spent five hours trying to figure out the meaning of life and the relativity of time through two different filmmakers' eyes. I never regret watching a movie, I just sometimes wonder what drives someone to recommend a film like this one in which nothing happens for the duration of 2 hours and 30 min. besides a few astronauts traveling in space to find a a big black block staring at them, while a psychopathic computer slowly kills off an entire crew of astronauts. I don't hate this movie just because I can and I can belong to a certain crowd of critics. I hate this movie because it wastes your time showing you images that are never explained which is essentially like Christopher Nolan giving us Inception minus all the dialogue that explained what was going on. Can you imagine watching Inception without any dialogue minus a page at the least? The mere thought frightens me. Once again, I say to you that Stanley Kubrick was not a bad filmmaker, he just made a film that has no relevancy or point which to some extend explains to some what the meaning of life is. Through this movie you learn that the simple answer is that there is no meaning. We are put in random situations for no reason and it all amounts to nothing. Thanks Kubrick.