2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
I still have not stopped scratching my head. I dozed off three times while watching the film. I watched it yesterday night and all this time I can't stop thinking about it. Damn, I even had dreams on it! Kubrick has made a glorious example of self-indulgent film making. The starting itself with prolonged idle shots of a prehistoric desert, he makes it amply clear that he is gonna take his own bloody time to tell what he got to say. The story is told in 4 phases and in each but one, a mysterious big black tablet appears supposedly due to some extra-terrestrial activity. In the first chapter, it is told how the tablet might have influenced human's thinking capabilities. The chapter named 'the dawn of man' is the story of ape men starting to use tools. Though the entire story is revolving around this tablet, nothing much is revealed on it other than that it has a huge magnetic field and that it sent a wave of radiation towards Jupiter. The third chapter on the expedition to Jupiter is the most interesting one, when an artificial intelligence computer on board the mission ship encounters a clash of interest with the astronauts. This film was made in 1968 and the kind of imagination that went into the making of this film is amusing. There are elaborate sequences on activities of and in space ships, with support from extensive sets and camera tricks which has to be revolutionary at the film's time. I think many later space films have taken cues from 2001 on various aspects of space life as well as filming techniques. The 'characterization' of the AI computer nicknamed HAL is the highlight of this film for me. The use of classic music gives an all different feel to scenes featuring space ships. There is a prolonged sequence of some photo active phenomenon that an astronaut goes through when he nears the surface of Jupiter. Only God and Kubrick knows what happened at the climax, and I'm not so sure about the former. Certainly, this film is not everyone's cup of tea, but if you are into serious cinema and want to experience what a director in command do to you with ambiguous imagery, they go witness the Odyssey.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Produced by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date: April 6, 1968
About the master director: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick
