Stanley Kubrick's ambiguous science fiction epic continues to baffle audiences around the world, even more than three decades after it was filmed.

Rating: 10/10 (2 April 2001)

The obvious question that someone is going to ask after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey is, `What was the meaning of that damn monolith?' Well, as is the case with the majority of great movies, 2001 spawns thinking and discussion. A movie that answers all of its questions neatly and in a timely manner can rarely be anything more than something to watch to kill a couple of hours. But 2001 is so creative and so mysterious that you really have to think about it and even watch it a few times over before you can begin to come up with a coherent meaning from it. This is a science fiction film for the thinking audience, as opposed to the fast food schlock that is cranked out by Hollywood (Mission To Mars, Pitch Black, Supernova, Armageddon, and other such nonsense), but with the obvious exception of the excellent Apollo 13.
Kubrick's superior directing skills are a large part of what makes this movie such a classic. The circular space station provides him with an opportunity to film some unique versions of his traditional tracking shots, and there is also something to be said about the way that he was able to make a menacing character out of a computer that had no features other than a monotonous voice and that unblinking red eye. The award winning special effects easily surpass the vast majority of the computer generated special effects used in science fiction films today, flawlessly creating a world of zero gravity and isolation. There were several different methods that were successfully utilized in order to create a convincing outer space setting, such as near constant tilted frames, amazingly effective rotating sets, ever present humming sounds from the machinery, among other strange sounds, as well as the slowness of everything, which is present throughout the entire film, at least the entire film after that world famous jump cut.
Speaking of which, I think that the cut from the bone flying through the air to the space ship floating through space was not done as well as it could have been. I think that the cut should have come a few frames sooner, when the bone had just started moving downward, so that the cut would be smoother, with the slow moving space ship. The story that follows also poses the question of how the monolith got to the moon, and even whether or not it is the same monolith as the Neanderthals found in the powerful Dawn of Man sequence. Was it really put there by an extraterrestrial species? Was it capable of moving on its own? What exactly was the effect that it had on individuals who came into contact with it? In the Dawn of Man sequence, it seemed that it gave at least one of the Neanderthals the intelligence burst of learning how to use something as a tool(or a weapon, in this case). But later in the film, it seems to have not only an intelligence (as it screams just before being photographed), but it has a less readily identifiable effect on humans  in particular, on Dave Bowman. Dave is in space near Jupiter, he goes through some sort of warp, and suddenly he is in a strange mansion, and soon there are a number of editing tricks in which Dave sees his older self, and then becomes that older self. Soon, he is so old that he is barely alive, and the monolith appears in the huge bedroom in which he lies. He slowly reaches out to it, and then turns into that famous mystical fetus that this film has come to be famous for.
Does this mean that the monolith is some sort of evolution stimulant? Did Dave evolve beyond present human kind to a state above the inconveniences of these vulnerable human bodies that we all possess? Who knows? Maybe Stanley Kubrick doesn't even know, but that's really not the point here. The point is that the movie really makes you think  and not just about the meaning of the monolith, but also about the underlying theme about man vs. machine. 2001: A Space Odyssey is famous for a lot of things. It's famous because it was directed by Stanley Kubrick, of course, but also for a lot of other things - the opening sequence, that jump cut, the mysterious monolith, the realness of it all, even for the look of the Jupiter spaceship, which bears a strange resemblance to the Even Horizon. The sequel, 2010, clears up some of the mystery of this film, but even though that film is very good (although not as good as this one), that tying up of loose ends is not necessary for 2001 to remain one of the best and most fascinating science fiction films ever made.