In Summer 2007 ....

Rating: 10/10 (6 January 2008)

Oscar Wilde said: " the moment you understand a piece of art, it is dead for you " ( or something to that effect ). 2001 is the exception, it may be dead for you if you don't understand it !! I am not going to tell you how good or bad this movie is ! others have done a pretty good job already, enough to say the opinions are polarized ! You either love it or find it the most boring thing you have ever watched, there is only one way to find out ! Since I love this movie, it was quite funny to read the negative comments, such as " dear God, kill me now .." , " cure for insomnia ". ( frankly , I do understand them and sympathize )
but the following may prove interesting ..
In summer 2007 ( early Aug. ), I was fortunate enough to see this magnificent movie, one more time, on big screen ( and I mean BIG!), during "under the stars" event , organised by Film4 (somerset house in London ) The event lasted about 10 days, and showed great movies, such as "the Good, the Bad and the Ugly" , "the thing", E.T. to name a few ( http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/film/default.asp ). The event was organised to show these movies ( usually one per night ), on state of the art sound and vision equipment in open air ( thus "under the stars" !). I attended "the good, the bad ..." and "2001" showing. During "the good, the bad .." , it got a bit chili, so I could see about a quarter of the viewers, slowly get up and leave , towards the last hour of the movie. However, on the Saturday night showing of "2001" , not only the court was over-filled beyond capacity ( people sat right up to the giant screen, virtually looking up !), but no one left the court before the end of the movie, even though it was much colder on that night !! Another thing that surprised me, was the average age of the viewers, to my eyes , almost 90 per cent of them, were not old enough to have seen the movie in a cinema before ( therefore , they could not have been there just for nostalgia ! ). It was commented by the organizers on the night, that "2001" attracted most viewers during the event.