Unparalleled Sci-Fi Classic

Rating: 10/10 (20 April 2008)

This is a profoundly intellectual and stylized motion picture that will remain a classic for all cinema history, long after all other space sci-fi yarns have been forgotten.
OK, so the film has a horribly glacial pace, especially when compared to most of today's films that obsessively whirl by at a frantic pace. The sequel "2010" has a faster pace, but is an utterly forgetful movie.
Also "2001" may be too cerebral and abstruse in this age where people swoon over computer special effects gimmicks in intellectually vacuous adventure flicks.
Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke crafted an epic story: The ascent of man from ape to human to "superman." The influence of an unseen extraterrestrial intelligence drives this evolution.
Also, Clarke was an award-wining science fiction author, not some Hollywood scriptwriting hack who butchers classic science fiction stories for screen adaptation.
The ending is weird only because Kubrick realized he could never show the extraterrestrials without it looking hoaky. This is as impossible as showing the face of God. And, attempts in all other sci-fi "E.T." films have failed miserably, including the overrated "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
So, "2001" becomes a bit abstract with the hotel room "cage" in the final scenes. Likewise, the legendary Black Monolith is a perfect representation of extraterrestrial technology: complete unfathomable.
Critics miss the subtlety that Kubrick was painting a bland picture of the techno-world of 2001, with boring, everyday bureaucrats and space jocks caught up in a fantastic civilization-altering event that is much larger that they can comprehend. Hence the low-key acting and dialog.
The film is impeccable and perfect for accuracy and attention to detail ands goes to astronomical lengths to assemble a plausible and realistic vision of the future. The cinematography and set design, done all in the Cinerama screen aspect ratio, is unparalleled in sci-fi film history.
But the film is showing its age in a few areas.
1. the psychedelic "stargate" trip at the end cements the film in the hippy-dippy 1960s.
2. The notion of a sentient all powerful HAL mainframe computer predates microprocessors. So there will never be such an all-controlling computer. But there will eventually be artificial intelligence that will blur the notion of a what it means to be a consciousness entity.
3. Though visionary, the film did not foresee women's liberation. There are no women characters except for flight attendants. Of course the Soviets, which were a step ahead in women's equality in the 1960s, have a couple of astrophysicist characters in the film.
4. The great lengths the government goes through for secrecy, like not telling the Discovery crew about the monolith (!?), is overly melodramatic and implausible.
5. The attempts to re-create a zero-gravity were clever for the time, but look pretty pasty now that we have real footage of astronauts in space.