The grand-daddy of epic art

Rating: 10/10 (4 November 2017)

How often do you get to see a work of art gifted a budget on this scale? It's hardly ever happened in history and this is what happens when it does happen, 2001 A Space Odyssey. It's a film that changed cinema in many ways, a film that inspired many film artists and continues to influence many directors presently.
Whenever a director wants to compare himself as one of the best, he almost always references 2001 and that tells you why 2001 is one of the most important films... and possibly the most important in American history.
There's so much that's different about 2001, particularly the structure of the film which was revealed in the Stanley Kubrick documentary as mode-jerking, instead of a 3 act structure. This simply says that the film is episodic, instead of having a beginning, middle and end.
It's a film that takes you back to a prehistoric act that probably references the first act of violence, represented as man's invention of a tool, that's used for killing and to feed ourselves. I say ''man'' because that's probably how Kubrick is representing evolution... but it isn't necessarily so. We then take a giant leap for mankind into the space age.
First we're in a mission to the moon, then a mission to jupiter. Both these missions are about government secrecy and mysteries that hold the key to civilization. I'm not going to get into the story, but what I love about this movie is the main usage of classical music with the way its placed with the footage in space. Kubrick has mostly succeeded in creating a true 3 dimensional space without cheap 3D effects or CGI, yet the special effects was a quantum leap for cinema.
One of the highlights for me was the character HAL 9000, the computer who exhibited higher emotion than the humans, a common argument in films about man becoming more like machines.
Then there's the finale, without dialogue for long stretches of time, 2001 is an experience that needs to be felt and doesn't need straight answers.