A great, but difficult film - vintage Kubrick

Rating: Null/10 (10 December 2002)

Outrageously good cinematography, special effects and soundtrack, and a very interesting glimpse into what we once thought the world might be like in the near future - even if the 2001 date was a bit optimistic. As is standard for a Kubrick film, it is designed to play with your mind and leave you feeling both disturbed and puzzled, to give you something to think about as you leave the theatre. It achieves this effortlessly, and the slow pacing of the film only adds to this by building the psychological tension. HAL, the psychopathic artificial intelligence that is the true star of the film, is magnificent, and the scene where HAL's intelligence is gradually shut down is one of the darkest in cinema history.
2001: A Space Odyssey has had enormous influence on cinema since - especially science fiction. I don't think it's overstepping the mark to say that Star Wars, Alien or Terminator could never have happened as they did without it. It set the benchmark for cinematography, music, effects, physical realism and story in science fiction, and although it has been surpassed since in some of these areas, probably no other science fiction film has done all of these so well all at once.
My only real gripe about the film is that it becomes extremely difficult to follow even the basics of the plot, let alone all the complex subtexts, in the final third of the film. The book of the same name gives some insight into what is going on, but it is not quite the same story, and in any case I don't think it should not be necessary to read the book to understand the film. Also, the long psychedelic animation scene is only fully appreciated under the influence of the right kind of visionary substances, or so I have been told by movie-loving psychonauts.
A true classic, and massively influential. Not everyone will like it, but mostly this is down to people not liking their psychological knobs being twisted, which 2001: A Space Odyssey does very well.