Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Douglas Rain
Plot: Mankind finds a mysterious, artificial artifact buried on the moon and with the intelligent computer HAL, set off on a space mission to Jupiter.
My head hurts. This film has hurt my head. What was it about? What did it mean? Why am I so confused? These are just a few of the questions that entered my mind after watching Stanley Kubrick masterful yet mind boggling sci-fi classic '2001: A Space Odyssey'. A film that has evoked much debate as to its greater themes and ideas, but I can't even begin to think about anything like that. All I saw was perhaps the greatest science fiction film ever made.
Opening a film with the only characters on screen being apes is pretty daring, but to have them on screen for a pre-longed amount of time with absolutely no dialogue is damn right crazy - of course the masterful Kubrick pulls it off. We start with two groups of apes fighting over a pool of water only for one group to discover a mysterious artifact that allows them to discover how to use bones as tools and (in a particularly brutal scene) as weapons. This may sound like some kind of warped documentary, but it is intriguing captivating and fascinating. Seeing the reaction of these apes to the towering plinth and the sound of that oh so iconic soundtrack combines to make a moment only Kubrick could produce - pure cinema.
Next we move onto Dr.Heywood Floyd (Sylvester) who is is assigned to a secret mission on the moon after another alien artifact is found. We know nothing of what the artifact does, what it means or how it got there, but that is all part of the mystery that makes 'Space Odyssey' so incredible. There is again little dialogue and we are told little about...well anything. If we were told out right what everything meant what would be the point of watching, just marvelling in the design and production of this movie alone makes it a worthy argument for the greatest film ever made. I haven't even mentioned HAL yet.
In the third segment we are introduced to the British accented HAL, who is the intelligent computer system controlling man's first space flight to Jupiter. He is creepy and when he malfunctions lets say things go slightly awry. His all seeing red eye keeps watch over astronauts Poole and Bowman as they make their journey to the solar system's largest planet. This is the strongest and perhaps most iconic section of 'Space Odyssey' as we see the astronauts attempt to manoeuvre the increasingly paranoid HAL. There are some truly scary and tense moments as the film then descends into hallucinogenic madness and I didn't have slightest clue what was happening, but it was just so captivating.
'Space Odyssey' is one of a kind there has been nothing like it since and there never will be. The creativity on show here is as mind bending as the plot - and that's saying something. There is just iconic design after iconic design which enthralled my imagination and make me wonder how on earth did they think of that and actually transfer it to film. This is what Hitchcock would describe as pure cinema - a director using visuals and sounds to create something that couldn't be produced in any other medium and this may be definitive example of it. Just a remarkable piece of work that, unlike much of modern film, blows the mind.
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