Curiously puzzling

Rating: 10/10 (25 January 2006)

I am not a "fan" of Stanley Kubrick's work. I don't consider him to be a "genius" filmmaker, but I do think his work is curiously intriguing and at times daring. So for that I give him respect, but that doesn't mean I'll praise his work. The only film of his that I truly enjoyed was The Shining. Full Metal Jacket I thought was curiously lacking something humanizing, and left me unengaged, unlike Francis Ford Coppola's surrealistic Apocalypse Now. However this film, 2001, I feel very strange about.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a thought-provoking sci-fi epic. I say "thought-provoking" because I had to think my way through this film, and was trying to figure out just what in hell I was watching, or what was going on. I've seen this film once (several years ago), and I plan on seeing it again sometime. Maybe after a few more viewings I'll be able to better understand the film, at least I hope so.
The film moves almost unbelievably slowly, border lining on tedium. I mean there's slow, and then there's SLOW. This film is SLOW. But somehow, and believe me I don't know exactly how, it did hold my attention. Like I said above, I was really just trying to figure out what was happening. I liked the character of HAL 9000. Actually I'm a sucker of anything about how technology, a creation of man, comes back to bite them in the ass (i.e. Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Matrix).
I don't understand exactly what 2001 was saying, but it kept me watching with anticipation, one could almost say excitement, but mostly just puzzlement. And for that I respect the film for confusing the hell out of me, because that's doesn't happen often, if ever when I watch a movie. Maybe if Donnie Darko had truly confused me, maybe I would have had more respect for it. And while 2001 may not be my favorite film of Kubrick's, it's certainly one of his more captivating films. I respect this film, but I didn't quite love it, because it left me puzzled. So I'm giving the film a score of an eight out of ten, perhaps upon a second, third or maybe even a fourth viewing I'll reconsider, and give it a higher score.