recently, I saw "2001: A Space Odyssey" for the third time, but understood it for the first

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2010)

For a long time, Stanley Kubrick's most influential and controversial movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey", was a befuddling enigma to me. I've pondered over the movie for ages now, trying to reason really what it was about and more importantly, what I thought of it. A few moments ago, I saw the movie for the third time, but for the first time I understood it and I understood why it has gone on to become one of the most celebrated movies of all time. I'll be honest; for a long time, I didn't think much of "2001" and now that I look back on those previous two experiences of watching it, I feel a little embarrassed that I was so far off the mark before. I just had to learn that "2001: A Space Odyssey" was not a film to be taken at face value; it was about something else. And that something else cannot be determined by a majority. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is about the individual's relation to the universe around him, and because human minds are as infinite as the stars, they are just as varied.
I always knew what "2001" was about in plot. It's a movie that is about humankind and man's relationship to the universe, composed of three stories that are interconnected in one of the most cosmically fascinating manners. The first part of the story concerns the dawn of man. The second relates to man's discovery of an artifact on the moon, hinting that maybe man is not the only intelligent being in the universe. The third revolves around a mission to Jupiter, in which the ship's computer, the famous villain HAL 9000, turns on the astronauts. And from here a fourth, most symbolic and controversial story emerges. That's what "2001" is about. *in plot.* What's it's *really* about is up to you.
"2001" means something a bit different to everybody. Some even think it has some religious (or even anti-religious) subtexts. Personally, I don't think so. To me, "2001" is about mankind's progress, but only in scientific terms. To my mind, it's about the progression of man from being a dumb brute to realizing that he possesses something that is greater than the stars and planets and his own machines that physically dwarf him in the universe. And the mysterious black monoliths whose origins go unexplained throughout the film are sort of like milestones in man's progress. And his progress is not his technological advances, but his intellectual ones. Throughout the movie, there is lots of symbolism about man's intelligence and how he uses it to overcome obstacles that lay before him. That's what it means to me.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" is a different kind of masterpiece. It does not work, as Roger Ebert noted, on a human level. The characters are flat and two-dimensional, acting is amateurish, there is not an extreme amount of development, but it doesn't really matter in a movie like this. The movie utilizes visual means to carry an impact to the audience and somehow this makes the movie even more powerful. I do think it would be even more of a masterpiece if it did work on a human level, but then the already stretched running time might slow down some more. Ironically enough, the most charisma and the most emotion comes not from our astronauts, but from HAL, the monotonous-voiced computer who turns lethal when threatened with his own "life." Stanley Kubrick won the only Oscar in his career not for directing, but for the special effects, which are jaw-dropping even by today's standards. They are especially awesome today, forty-some years since the movie's debut, because it staggers the imagination to wonder how they could have been done in the 1960s. But what makes these effects so special is not the mere fact that they are eye candy, but because they are used with imagination and delicacy so even the four-plus-minute sequences where very little besides objects floating in outer space coupled with Johann Strauss's waltzes can be mesmerizing.
It took me a long time and three views, but at last I do understand why people cherish "2001: A Space Odyssey." Not only is it a truly mesmerizing film, but it's a deeply symbolic one about man's folly and success. But what's best of all is that it means somethingand not something definite, but individualized. It meant something to its creators and it means something different to us as individuals. That's an odd parallel to life, isn't it? Now for some, the movie is too long and I agree the running time is a little stretched and Kubrick might have done the film some good if he chopped a few sequences of space exploitation, but overall, "2001: A Space Odyssey" is an amazing accomplishment not merely in special effects, but in cinema. It's a different kind of masterpiece – one that takes some getting used to it – but it is a marvel much like outer space itself.