an experiential journey into fundamental questions of our origin and destiny

Rating: 10/10 (20 February 2002)

This film prompts one to question ourselves about our origin, our existence and our ultimate destiny as living entities. Rather than attending some classes on philosophy, it is better to watch this film, because the serious sets, the slick plot and the brooding music imperceptibly but inevitably lull the mind into deep thought about ourselves. Lull may not be the best word to describe the way we end up thinking about ourselves, for it is true that the first scenes of our anthropoidal ancestry inspire shock, even a definite sense of terror, (even horror), then the ascent into space inspires a sense of hope commingled with awe, until one is plunged into a sense filled with all the horror of the abyss and the bottomless mysteriousness that it invokes in us when the team of astronauts die after they come into contact with the mysterious monolith, then the plateau of hope at seeing the astronauts in their Jupiter Mission, then the new terror that is whipped up imperceptibly with incredible subtlety by the claustrophobic interiors of the space ship and the absolute impersonality of HAL, particularly the voice of HAL by Douglas Rain and then when HAL goes berserk, the feeling of utter helplessness seizes us, but this is alleviated again by the mysterious conclusion that the monolith (that emblematizes the secret ultimate destiny of mankind) may not be totally lethal (as in the killing of the astronauts on the Moon) after all-- does it help man on alternate occasions or does it help out of some whim? The film's strongest point is its undeniable quality of promoting a fundamentally heuristic question about US!