2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

I’m a little embarrassed to say that it took this long for me to finally get around to seeing what is widely viewed as a classic. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect when I sat down to watch one of , if not the, seminal science fiction films of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think I had some notion that the technology would look sort of dated, but that since it was directed by Stanley Kubrick, the concepts and craft would be top rate. One of my closest friends (a woman whose cinematic sensibilities and tastes run very close to mine) saw it once when she was 12, and hated it. So I was curious.

It opens with a pitch black screen. For minutes, there’s nothing. Then the iconic music begins. It’s been used and parodied so many times, I'm not sure if its capable of having its original effect anymore. Finally we see the sun, earth and moon. This type of symbolism is used throughout.

Essentially the movie is a triptych.

The first part consists of early man (read: humans dressed in monkey suits) living in packs, in a barren desert. There is no dialogue (remember: monkeys don’t talk, except in the new Planet of the Apes movies) for the first 25 minutes of the movie. Which is challenging. In 2014, its unusual have wordless sections that last this long, especially to open a movie. Tribes of these hairy creatures eat, drink, fight, chase each other back-and-forth away from a watering hole, make lots of noise, and do what monkeys do. Until one day they wake to discover an enormous stone block (“the monolith”) sitting where nothing in particular had been sitting the day before. The monkeys are frightened, then curious. We can almost hear them think: “What is this thing? And why is it here?”

Soon after, we see one of the monkeys use a bone to kill another monkey, then a tapir. I took it to be the first-ever uses of tools by animals (I learn from IMDB that in addition, this is also supposed to depict early humans learning to use weapons, kill with them, eat meat, and walk upright; who knew?). After killing the tapir, he flings the bone in the air. The camera follows the spinning bone into a jump cut, and suddenly we see a space ship orbiting earth. So begins the second, and most-engrossing portion of the film.

A second monolith has been found buried on the moon. Scientists are summoned in secret, to determine its origin. I can’t divulge what they find wihout ruining the suspense, but Kubrick creates a creepy tension around the mystery of the monolith.

Because of what the scientists discover, a team of astronauts is sent to explore one of Jupiter’s moons. Their mission is top secret. All but two of them are kept in hypersleep for the duration of the travel. Overseeing almost all of the ship’s function is an omnipotent computer program called the HAL 9000. He exists only as a eerily calm voice, and red fish-eye light. Yet over the course of the film, he becomes one of the best movie villains ever.

The special effects here are incredibly convincing, especially considering they were created over 40 years ago, long before computers could create entire worlds with the movement of a mouse. It looks like these actors are actually moving around in outer space. Movies made decades later (even now!) aren’t this realistic.

The final third of the film is introduced by a title card reading “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.” Uh oh. This new-agey hokum doesn’t bode well (and also recalls questionable title decision of the Metallica documentary Through the Never). I’m not sure how to begin to describe this section of the movie, other than to say it comes across now—in 2014—like the way we in the early 2000s think naïve film makers in the 60s would portray acid trips. All fast movie spicy lights and bright colors going every where. It was the 60s. Add to this a confusing scene set in a Louis XIV bedroom, where one of the characters has aged decades. What any of this means, I’ve no idea. Maybe it's a clue that co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke said “if you understood ‘2001’ completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered.” With the bookends of the film, at least, mission accomplished.

But none of that really matters. What’s remarkable is how well the movie’s aged. The technology doesn’t phony or hokey, always a risk with sci-fi pictures. In fact it’s held up incredibly well. It all looks great, and still feels conceptually realistic. Nothing comes across like the computers in the Batcave from the campy 60s TV show (where everything had notecards describing what it was and did; because its users wouldn’t know?). With a few small details aside (I’m looking at you gravity boots and food drunk through straws), all of it still looks and seems plausible and current. Things like voice-recognition software were still decades away, but they got it mostly spot-on, here. Even the space suits look accurate.

The look of the film is terrific. Down to the tiniest details (lengthy description of a zero-G toilet, as well as exploding bolts on a pod door), the film is exquisite. The sets and their decoration—perfect. Kubrick’s trademark blinding white over-lighting is everywhere. But there are splashes of color, too. The primary-colored spacesuits against the blank room. The bright lights on control panels set in darkness. Also worth mention is the frequent use of bizarre camera angles. It adds an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia to the space-station scenes.

Finally, what they accomplished mimicking zero gravity is terrific to the point of distraction. I found myself trying to figure out “How’d they do that in 1968?”, rather than paying attention to the film. It’s really incredible.

It’s difficult to overstate how influential this one movie has been. Alien, Terminator, Close Encounters, Star Wars, Gravity, Apollo 13, and countless others all owe a debt to 2001. This film got so much right, so many years before we all had phones in our pockets, internet, WiFi, or iTunes. It was so prescient so long ago, that its easy to forgive that its interpretive beginning and ending sections are pretty slow and impenetrable. With how far both visual and special effects have come in the ensuing 40 years, its hard to forgive the men-in-suits bit. Not to mention the interpretive, surrealistic qualities of both sections make them pretty dull. But the middle section is so good, so visionary and so suspenseful, I didn’t even worry about not knowing what the hell all the symbolic and metaphorical stuff (like the space baby at the end) even meant. 

(PS- I just read Ebert's review, and am not confident he understood the ending, either)