"Open the pod bay doors, Hal"

Rating: 10/10 (24 January 2003)

It seems rather fashionable these days for film critics to dismiss this film as "pretentious" and "boring" (is it just me, or do critics often appear to represent a homogenous group-mind?) Certainly, it isn't a film that would be considered viable by any production company today, since it has camera shots lasting more than a fraction a second each and a lack of good guys and bad guys running around calling each other... well, let's say casting aspersions as to their relationships with the maternal side of their families.

It never was meant to be a film for resolutely earth-bound dullards with MTV-addled attention spans. 2001: A Space Odyssey was made in a time where experimentation was still possible in the main stream of film making. No, I don't quite understand why Dave Bowman ends up as a giant foetus floating in space either, but I am given the opportunity to interpret this and other images, rather than have everything explained to me by some angry, shouting character.
The humans in this film are mere ciphers. Bowman and Poole remind me of some of the most unreflective and basic humans I have ever worked with (which is saying something, as I work in I.T!) But Kubrick never was much interested in the minutiae of human interaction, (in his films, at least), no, for him it was the bigger picture.
What is suggested here - and remember, it is a story - is that an advanced alien race has assisted our development as a species... initially by teaching us how to bash each other's brains in. This aggression - negative though it may seem - appears to be the quality that leads to our dominance of the planet. It's interesting that we are introduced to Bowman, onboard the Discovery, jogging around the space ship practicing his boxing moves - Man, millions of years later, still throwing punches (note also, the karate bout shown on a TV during the Moon visit by Floyd).
It might be of interest too, to reflect upon that philosopher of nastiness Frederick Nietzche, who wrote something to the effect that Man is not the end product of life on Earth, but merely a conduit to the "Superman" (Also Sprach Zarathustra is the name of Fun-time Freddie's most famous tract, as well as the title of the film's opening - and closing - music, by Strauss. Coincidence?)
The "Beyond the Infinite" sequence, with our Dave seemingly careering headlong into the Pearl and Dean cinema advert (non-UK residents may be forgiven for not knowing what the Hell I'm talking about!) is simply masterful. Why aren't films this ambitious anymore?
Cherish this motion picture, for you will never see its like again.