"I don't think I've seen anything quite like this before."

Rating: 10/10 (1 August 2011)

It is time for me to admit something: I have been wrong. I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in high school and did not think much of it. Returning to it some years later, it is like I am seeing a whole different film. While I do think it went above my head the first time, I do not think that I understand it any better now, but HAL's statement above ironically rings truer now than it did back then.
The four different acts (depending on how you count them, I guess) blend together perfectly and are all quite riveting. The opening part with the apes, which I found rather puzzling the first time around, makes for a necessary transition into the rest of the film, given the final act. The two center acts, which more closely resemble a traditional science fiction, about some astronauts investigating a strange discovery in space, are absolutely thrilling, and the final act is almost mind-bending.
There is something meticulous, intense, and distinctly Kubrickian about the way many scenes unfold. The technical perfection is present throughout the entire film, but this is something that particularly struck me during the section within the spaceship, where Kubrick prolong scenes and individual shots until they almost get a different meaning, or at least tell more than they initially did; just look at Dr. Bowman's face during the scenes inside the pod. Maybe it is only by association of the music, but I think that many of the wordless segments, which are allowed to take their time and are never rushed, yet never dragging, play out almost like a symphony of their own, or at least an extension of The Blue Danube, among other pieces.
While the film works extremely well at face value, there seems to be a lot going on below the surface as well. First, there is HAL, who seems like a symbol for the cold and rational, which is something I recognize from much of Kubrick's filmmaking. It is only natural, then, that his demise, which is both tragic and disturbing, and, also ironically, one of the most human moments of the film, makes way for the if not irrational, then at least irregular final act, that goes even further beyond traditional narration – beyond infinity if you will. And again, on a surface level it is one of the most visually stunning segments I have seen.
Then there is the monolith, which seems to be a symbol for the unknown, mysterious and perhaps evolutionary. The sun towering above it is a striking image, and in the end, shortly after the monolith is last seen, it feels like the viewer is thrown into something completely new, perhaps the future, which is the perfect way to close an odyssey that has already spanned from the dawn of man to present time.