The filmic equivalent of a masterpiece painting.

Rating: 10/10 (12 January 2007)

Although I'm not a big fan of the sci-fi genre overall, I'm well aware of Stanley Kubrick and remain a big fan of his films. As it was with '2001: A Space Odyssey', the film completely blew me away.
With some very haunting music throughout and some superb use of classical tunes; 2001: A Space Odyssey gets its experience across via visuals twinned with melodies rather than all out, fast, choppy action which entertains on a different level. With lengthily takes, long compositions and drawn out activity; the film had quite an effect on me as I sat there in rather a bemused awe that a film like this actually existed, let alone managed to hide from me for all those years, let alone actually be produced in 1968. Its sheer unpredictability and grace makes it, like most other Kubrick films, something you have to settle down to watch properly rather than put on any old film.
The fact no human is actually present for the first twenty or so minutes and the opening consists solely of apes at the dawn of mankind is fascinating in itself and although there are complaints of it being too long and that the only real important thing we get out of this start is the fact the monolith makes it presence known as evolution happens, it's built up in a way that we can start to relate to the apes; see what they're going through and ultimately, get a feeling for the long timeframe that's going on as evolution takes place only every million years or whatever so this long, slow opening does serve a purpose: to create the feeling time is going past.
Once human characters are thrown into the fray (via that famous cut you've no doubt heard of) certain conventions of psychological horror/drama are present in characters building up another place through eerie rumours and negative opinions through dialogue. This occurs when the doctors around the tables are badmouthing the place where the monolith has mysteriously appeared; somewhere the guy we've just spent the last ten minutes solely with is going; and it's truly unnerving. This is also a great chance to blend in some future things through humour and whatever else. These things include the fact Pan-Am now make space rockets to the fact the gravity toilet instructions run all the way down the side of the wall as it's so complicated to use and yet, is merely a toilet. Great stuff.
When the next 'stage' of the film occurs after the mysterious monolith wins round two on mankind; the, arguably, most well known segment of the film kicks in: the exchanges on board the space ship containing the HAL 9000 computer. This is probably my favourite part too but only because the dialogue, exchanges, tension and brain bending camera work all work together as one. The chess game early on in the segment which is so easily missed amongst the rest of the beauty is an early indication and warning that the HAL 9000 isn't as tame as you'd think and beats the human crew member rather easily, obnoxiously asking the pitiful human if he resigns the game to which the crew member submits. During the rest of this segment, bizarre things like seeing the ship from the computer's point of view, watching it attempt to lip read the crew through sound proof glass and the title 'intermission' coming up during this is really something to behold, thus, it makes something like a simple close up shot of a red light staring right back at you something that has never been so eerie in a film before.
The final piece in this puzzle occurs at a location that I won't spoil but after all this space and spaceship setting, suddenly appearing in this new location is very disorientating and, again, takes you aback since you just can't predict it. What do all the colours and shapes mean that flair up just before this and why are still images of the surviving space team member flashing up at random intervals? I feel this is the monolith sucking in the character into another dimension, possibly into itself, where it nurtures and grows the character so old, that it has to re-birth it. Stunning stuff.
With ambiguity, humour, colour, randomness, fantastic use of music and very eerie suspense; 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably one of the greatest films of its genre and rightfully deserves its praise.