A Balanced View

Rating: 8/10 (15 December 2001)

I saw this movie for the first time last week on DVD and I can see both points of view on this.
The story really is patchy and certainly doesnt make sense at times. Also I found that it did not satisfy my desire for an ending to the story. However that may be a part of what the film is meant to be.
Unlike most I loved the ape sequence all apart from the monolith. Never was it explained how it got there or why or even what impact it had, I thought when I saw it that it would empower the chimps somehow but then it seemed they evolved themselves.
The cut from bone to space ship was daring at the time, not particuarly well done but it does provoke thought. The musical sequence from there is what the movie is known for and is good to watch once although i'm not sure about more than that. It must be remembered that at the time it would have facinated viewers with ideas they had never seen before and that is how it should be judged.
The story starts off well, setting up a plot of finding a monolith and sending an investigation crew to Jupiter. This is where it feels like I started watching a different movie, one inside of the main movie. The idea of HAL and him going mad was well done but not explained at all in 2001 (more on that later). Apart from HAL none of the charachters were personable enough to gain any empathy with them, which detracts a little from me and the movie tends to plod along from there.
Then bowman finds the larger monolith and the movie turns. The stargate sequence (not sure what to call it) is visually stunning even by todays standards and the realisation half way through of a birth is good even though I had a clue from the DVD chapter title. It did however last too long for my liking and I didnt like the changing ages much at all.
Then the movie ends, I feel a little empty, stunned by those effects being from '68 and not '98 but empty. I didn't understand.
Until I bought 2010 which despite not being directed by Kubrick is the actual sequal. It explains HAL's madness, it uses the changing ages of bowman and expands on the Birth and "full of stars" idea and has a nice message at the end, especiually in the middle of the cold war.
Really Kubrick used the book as a template to try something different, some of it worked, some didnt, the story was nearly forgotten in the artistic element.
As a stand alone movie in the current day it is OK, not good, not bad and very confusing. However in the context of 1968 with the amazing effects, music to chill your spine and remembering that no-one had ever tried anything like this before it is a historical classic, not a story classic but a piece of cinematographical history. Without 2001 there would have been no Star Wars, no Close Encounters, no E.T., no Star Trek and quite possibly science fiction would be very very different.
The ideas from 2001 have formed the basis of both Sci-Fi and computer enhanced special effects, changing both forever and despite the film not in itself being quite right it is probably the most influencial piece of cinematography since Citizen Kane and the next movie to stir even half as much technical interest did not arrive until the Matrix just a few years ago, thats how far ahead of it's time it was.
As a closing note I would reccommend to anyone interested in cinema history to get this on DVD, and anyone interested in understanding it get 2010 as well and if possible read bothy books, the ideas may be dated by todays standards, brith of a new star and all but at the time they were revolutionary and it would be unfair of us to judge it in any other way.