The odyssey

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2005)

"You are free to speculate, as you wish, about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of '2001'." (Stanley Kubrick) I found these words at kubrick2001.com, a website that is specifically dedicated to Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, many even hail this movie as Kubrick's best. 2001: Space Odyssey. The website tries to give an explanation about the meaning of 2001. I don't know whether their interpretation is correct, but due to the words from Kubrick above, I think everybody will have a different opinion on the movie.
As for me, honestly I was also confused when I finished watching 2001. 2001 is divided into four parts. The first is titled: The Dawn of Man. It visualizes the prehistoric era, millions years ago. This part follows the life of a group of apes, how they did their daily routine, like eating, drinking, sleeping. All of these apes were performed convincingly by actors in ape suit. You can tell if they were wearing ape suits, because there were no CG effects at that time. That's the first good impression that I got, visually.
One day, suddenly a monolith appeared on the place where the apes lived. Then there was a sequence where an ape found the way to use a bone as a tool, or more appropriate, a weapon. 2001 entered the second part. It was the space exploration era. And now we will begin to see the visual effects greatness of this movie. Of course, all of the effects will be easily produced using CGI nowadays, but considering the era this film was made, it was really marvelous. I was particularly impressed how they managed to visualize 'zero gravitation' on a spaceship perfectly. People were able to walk on walls, or upside down, a pen was able to float around in the air, and many more. The spaceship interior design was also great. In this second part, a monolith was again discovered on the moon. And it brought us into the third part.
This part was probably the main focus of the movie. At least according to me. It was still in the space exploration era, but men were now able to travel to Jupiter on a space mission. Some astronauts were put to hibernation, and were carried in a spaceship. There were two more men as the crew of the ship. And now, 2001 introduced its most memorable character, HAL 9000. HAL 9000 is a computer. A very intelligent one. It can speak like humans do. And it controlled all things in the spaceship to help the mission's success. This is probably the clue to the more advanced era we had here, compared to the second part. In this part we will get probably one of the most intense confrontation in movie history, men versus computer. Or more exactly, the spaceship crew against HAL. And again, a monolith appeared and brought us to the final part.
This final part was the one that quite difficult to understand. There were many weird things, some kind of symbolism, I guess. I won't talk about this part more, cause it will spoil the movie.
Some people may get bored watching 2001. Well, it is maybe the slowest movie I ever saw. But from what I read, 2001 had set a standard for science fiction films. It even got a sequel, 2010. Hey, a difficult movie like this got a sequel? I previously thought only blockbuster movies got sequels. Or maybe 2001 was a blockbuster in its era? I don't know. But obviously it drew attentions of many people.
2001 was based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, who also co-wrote the movie script with Kubrick. Probably a good thing to read the novel to get better understanding of this film. But if Kubrick were saying the above words, I don't think this movie has the same vision as the novel anymore. Kubrick2001.com interpret 2001 as mainly a movie about human evolution. Their interpretation quite makes sense. But I don't really agree, nor disagree. I still don't know what actually did the monolith represent, a time mark? God? or a time shift hole? But I do interested in the HAL versus man part. It was kind of suggesting how our technology had developed. The technological advancement finally only brought disaster to man himself. To think of it, where is our technology currently heading to? To what end? Is technology really developed to improve our lives? Or is it only made to represent man's sense of pride? In the end, 2001: Space Odyssey is indeed a landmark movie.