Brilliant

Rating: 10/10 (15 April 2020)

2001: A Space Odyssey is truly one for the ages. It explores the visual medium in such a creative and hypnotic way, all film lovers should be glad it even exists.
The film is broken up into several acts. In the first, a tribe of prehistoric apes discovers a mysterious monolith, which we can already tell is truly out of this world. They are hesitant at first, but quickly find themselves enthralled by the wonder of this foreign object. I suppose one could say that many viewers have the same experience while watching the film; we don't really understand it, but are mysteriously captivated nonetheless. Like many things, this object is never clearly explained, but it seems to teach the tribe how to use bones as weapons.
After this sequence, however, is where the film quickly gains its unique sense of identity. The use of in-universe sounds and dialogue are minimal, and several sequences are purely visual with Strauss' music playing in the background. It is slow, but intentionally so as befitting of a film about a journey in space.
Eventually, the scientists discover an identical monolith to the ones that the prehistoric apes discovered. Throughout this entire sequence, as scientists are discovering a "mysterious finding", it is incredibly clear to the audience what this discovery is. Visually, Kubrick has allowed us to fill in the gaps of information while maintaining realism in the dialogue. Although not explicitly stated, it is heavily implied that the monolith inspires the invention of the HAL-9000 sentient supercomputers.
In the next sequence, a team of astronauts are on a journey to Jupiter. Although nothing immediately seems amiss, there is a growing sense that something is off. The environment becomes even more unsettling as we sense the growing friction between the impossibly proud Hal and the wary astronauts. As the film cuts to an intermission, things are about to quickly spiral out of control for these astronauts.
Many copies suffer from the unfortunate trend of impatience that has invaded Hollywood over time; the intermission is cut down to a minute or removed entirely. It is quite unfortunate that the content that Kubrick put out should be butchered so that people can get back to scrolling through Twitter a bit sooner. There is a certain beauty in intermissions; people can take a breath and reflect on what they had just witnessed. In the epic "Seven Samurai", I distinctly remember the intermission as an integral part of the experience, and I can say the same for "2001".
The final hour of the film is all about losing one's limited grasp of reality: first the characters, then even the viewers themselves. Normally, I am very hesitant to get into films that become purely metaphorical, but it fits the context perfectly in this case. The mysteries of space aren't meant to be perfectly understood; as far as we know, they never will be.