You have to let this film "happen" to you as a "right-brained" experience, and then it becomes "the ultimate trip" as it was originally intended!

Rating: 10/10 (17 February 2012)

When I first saw this film back in 1969, I'm sure that I was as bewildered and disappointed as virtually everyone else in the cinema that cold Friday night.
I was hoping that this film would be an exciting, big-budgeted Science Fiction film about a trip to the planet Jupiter, under the ever watchful control of a sophisticated on-board computer named the HAL-9000.
The main reason for my bewilderment was the fact that the story (and it does have a story) is told in such an extremely minimal way, with so few dialog and "action" scenes, that it needs to be viewed as a "right brain" experience rather than a "left brained" one. By "right brain" I mean that the film is basically one that relies totally on "visuals" rather than on "left brained", logical dialog scenes.
This is one film in which you really need to use your "intuition" in order to appreciate what is happening from moment to moment. You need to do away with the need for dialog scenes, and let the film's visuals just "wash all over you" until you become immersed in their utter brilliance of execution.
You have to let the film "happen" to you, and, if you do, then it becomes as it was originally advertised to be: "the ultimate trip"! This all seems so hard to believe now, because since then, this film has become one of my all time Top Ten Films, and I named it Best Film of 1968 (the year it was made) because, if you look at most of the films made that year, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY stands head and shoulders above them all.
The film starts with a section called, THE DAWN OF MANKIND, and shows a group of apes before, and then after, they make contact with a mysterious black monolith that makes its appearance near a watering hole they congregate near. This monolith makes a few more startling appearances as the film progresses.
After contact with this imposing monolith, the apes seem to gain "intelligence", and one of them takes the giant leap into being able to take one of the bones of a dead animal, and then use it as weapon to kill another animal! That's some leap in intelligence, isn't it??!! So, immediately we can sense that this monolith is not all wonderful and it has its bad side.
Then, without too much warning, we are thrust immediately into the year 2001, and we see a gigantic space station rotating around the earth. On the soundtrack we can hear the opening strains of Johann Strauss' beautiful piece of music, THE BLUE DANUBE.
Thus begins one of the most amazing sequences ever put on film: the giant space station rotates ever so gracefully, and the special effects are totally believable as we truly feel we are in outer space, looking down at our beautiful planet Earth. Geoffrey Unsworth's excellent cinematography, the special effects and the Strauss background music score all combine to make the first great impression on our "right brain" I mentioned earlier.
For me, I find it almost impossible not to enjoy this particular sequence of the film because I love the use of special effects in films, and these are definitely "special" effects that genuinely enhance the film's sense of "place". In other words: where we are at the moment. In this instance: we're in outer space, gliding in tandem with the gigantic space station.
Because of the magic this scene generates, we do not need "left brained" dialog for this sequence. In fact, dialog, and even a few sound effects, would have ruined it and it would have been too jarring and disruptive. The soundtrack music puts us in the correct mood immediately because it is so relaxing, and yet, so upbeat at the same time. Or is the director, Stanley Kubrick, giving the audience a sense of false security? Because we feel so comfortable with this wonderful music playing on the soundtrack, we do not think that there is any need for us to be alarmed, which in fact we need to be later on in the film when the all-controlling HAL-9000 computer reveals its true nature.
From this point onwards, the film starts to gather some much needed momentum, and we soon discover that one of those monoliths has been found on the Moon. And it seems that someone (or some thing?) from outer space is sending the Earth messages in the form of these black monoliths, but Earthlings are not apparently smart enough to comprehend these messages as yet!! A new section begins gently and we are then thrust peacefully into another section, set some time much later: VOYAGE TO JUPITER. From here on we are part of the mini-drama that evolves between the two astronauts, Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, when the HAL-9000 computer gets a bit too sneaky and starts to sabotage this all important journey because it is too important for possible "human error". Maybe HAL's the one who has been organizing the placement of the black monoliths on Earth and in space.
It's a thought, and at least this film makes you think.
All of Stanley Kubrick's films have, in one way or another, divided his fans and his critics: people seemed to either love these films or hate them. So, in that way, Kubrick was always a complete "master" of keeping the public guessing, and thinking.
And he kept this ability all his working life.