2001 is the best film ever made, period.

Rating: 10/10 (25 October 2000)

If you need to have your brain bludgeoned and dragged around by explosion, car chases, flowing blood, contrived sentimentality, and/or abusive language for a movie to be interesting, then 2001 is probably not for you. It is a film that insists on equal parts contemplation and imagination, and its success in engendering such a reaction puts it in a small pantheon of movies deserving of the more glorious identification as "film." Compelling in creating an awesome, sublime spectacle, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke have given us a time-lapse pictorial of man through his history, with the universe itself as backdrop. No, more than backdrop--for Kubrick and Clarke, the universe is a character in this epic, overwhelming in its silence, its vastness, its inscrutability. It holds the secret of man's identity, and it is the unlocking of this mystery that becomes the dramatic impetus of the story. Kubrick's dry sense of humor is at play in his depiction of man, a creature barely conscious as he almost sleepwalks his way to uncovering the mystery. The less perceptive viewer may find the plot movement slow, the characters robotic, and the resolution elusive--but these descriptions point to Kubrick and Clarke's possible message: that man, maybe the luckiest, most self-absorbed, and most obtuse of beings, is ever-so-slowly grasping his place in and relationship to his universal home. If you're patient and attentive, it is a story as funny and engaging as it is sober and searching. Brilliant and inspired in his execution, Kubrick is at the top of his game, creating a cinematic canvas with breadth and depth, and a perspective with perfect clarity of purpose. Watching 2001 was the first time I felt the power and glory in art, and it remains such an inspirational experience to this day. If you've ever cocked an inquiring eye to the cosmos and wondered about the philosophical connection between you and those points of light dotting the celestial dome, then 2001 might work for you. For me, it is simply the best film ever.