Best sf film ever made

Rating: 10/10 (16 January 2002)

The list of good sf films is extremely short. Topping that list, with a good bit of space between it and number 2, is "2001: A Space Odyssey". Browsing the other IMDB comments, I see that this is basically a love it or hate it film. Many people seem to dislike this film intensely, and many call it boring. I can't imagine finding a film like this boring, but hey, that's me. Fellowship of the Ring was boring. This is edge-of-your-seat material. I honestly can't take my eyes off the screen.

Anyway, the other camp consists of people like me who simply can't stop gushing about the film. There is a very small minority who like, or even love the film, but call it "flawed". The definition of "flaw" is such a subjective one, though. To my mind, there are definitely aspects of this film which many people will not, do not, and never were expected to like. But they're not flaws. Not to me.
Yes, the plot is notoriously difficult to penetrate. When asked about the story, Arthur C. Clarke said something like "Watch the film. Read the book. Watch the film again. Read the book again." Quite obviously, Kubrick and Clarke (who developed the film together... neither the film nor the book was "based on" the other) intended the plot to be opaque, intended the finale to be ambiguous, and intended to encourage audiences to think about the film and draw their own conclusions. Now, if you are a film-goer who dislikes ambiguity, who wants a simple story simply communicated to you (and there's not a thing wrong with that), you're going to call that a flaw. But I refuse to consider something a flaw when it was so obviously the conscious intention of the film-makers. You can argue that the approach they took made for a film which is not enjoyable to you, but if they had taken any other approach, they'd have made a different film. Thus, ambiguity, for instance, can't be considered a flaw of this film. It's like saying that The Sixth Sense would have been a better movie if it had been about pirates.
Anyway, everybody talks about the special effects and the music and blah blah blah. Everybody talks about the HAL sequence. Blah blah blah. I don't want to talk about any of that stuff. It really diminishes the film, in my opinion, to discuss it like that. More so than any other, this is a film where each aspect (script, performances, cinematography, music, special effects, etc.) blends together with all the others to create a sort of indivisible whole. This is the movie equivalent of a prime number. [God, that sounds pretentious!] But anyway, discussing singular pieces of the film is to miss the greater effect of the whole. This film is an experience much more than it is a story, and that experience is created by the confluence of every aspect of the film. [This is why, incidentally, I think the film works so much better than the book... a novel is, by its very nature, suggestive of a narrative. The simple procession of words is inherently evocative of a story structure. A film does not have this limitation, and is therefore able to achieve much more by deviating from the constraints of classical narrative structure, which this film does toward the end.]
Another reviewer here states that if you haven't seen this on the big screen, you haven't seen it all. I'm afraid I haven't seen it on the big screen. But I would like to add that if you've only seen this film once, you haven't seen it at all. A single viewing (or even less) may indeed be enough to convince you that you have no interest in plumbing the depths of this immense and powerful film. But if you are not instantly alienated by the unconventional aspects of the film, you simply must see it again and again (and also read the book... though inferior, as I said, it is also instrumental to a full appreciation of the film).
If you simply don't like the film, that's fine. You are far from alone. I would suggest you check out the book and film "Contact". It is a far more conventional version of practically the same basic story.