A powerful tale for adults

Rating: 10/10 (9 November 2011)

The didacticism - as a mean to elevate the mankind in the story and the viewer's mind in the reality - is at the core of this movie (both levels making a nice "mise en abîme"). In the story this force is incarnated by black monolith entities. In the reality it is enabled by direction and plot devices.
Two examples:

Early in the movie, a monolith appears and enables an ape to learn how to use a tool. A few scenes later, a most fantastic ellipsis figures millenniums of scientific progress.

Later in the plot, an astronaut jumps across the void from one spaceship to another while the ensemble heads toward Jupiter at a tremendous speed, thereby exploiting an uncommon situation to provide the viewers with a striking illustration of the Galilean relativity.

Possibly, that "didacticism" is even more powerful: it helps you grasping the movie's breathtaking aesthetic beauty and - dare I say - metaphysical grandeur. The deliberately slow pace is a key element to that and in a way sets the mental time-lapse your brain should lock in, like in a zen session where the time perception is altered.
Another radical choice: the human characters lack emotional depth and seem to be trapped in their routine, like the men on the moon taking a souvenir photo before the monolith at the very moment the entity emits a signal, probably bound to have repercussions on the whole mankind... It makes sense as this adventure far exceeds the individual scale with its time spanning from the prehistory to 2001 and its space from the earth to Jupiter and beyond. It is as if Kubrick doesn't want to divert us from the essential, hence the humans are reduced to a quasi "puppet" dimension so that us viewers can flow through the story unhindered by "down to earth" human considerations.
As a narration 2001 is the literature antithesis: the dialogues are scarce and often insignificant while the images and music have rarely conveyed so much evocation power.
The art in this movie has the same scale than the story it tells. The classical music used is timeless. It's also called "savant" music by some definitions. Part of Kubrick's own genius in this work is the osmosis between the images and music: the eerie, cold space images are harmoniously counterbalanced with the warm "Blue Danube" waltz. The dreamlike visions of "Jupiter and beyond" and Ligeti's haunting work go hand in hand. And there is silence when really nothing else than silence would fit. At last, you would almost be compelled to believe that Strauss' "Also sprach Zarathustra" was composed especially for the occasion - and that it is worthy of the movie rather than the opposite!