2001: A Space Odyssey, initial thoughts

Well, I saw Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi 'masterpiece' 2001: A Space Odyssey recently and thought I'd share my thoughts on the film. Firstly, I know the film's been out for over forty years and I should have seen it earlier, but now I've seen it I think I should publish what I think about it.

The most prominent theme of the film (at least to me) was that of evolution, represented by the Monolith, which usually prompts some sort of change to behavior or appearance to beings that near it: Such as the ape in the prehistoric section of the film, after coming into contact with the Monolith is able to make a weapon and use it to fend off it's rivals, and in the climactic scene it turns Dave Bowman into a new life form, bringing human evolution full circle; the Monolith created them and then surpassed them.

In addition the scientific depiction of space was refreshing from what Hollywood usually produces; when in space there was very little in the way of sound effects (this emphasis on detail is known as 'hard sci-fi'), the sound effects were replaced with ballet music and simple breathing sounds. This gave space a sense of grandeur and shots of it lasting minutes depict the scale and beauty of the galaxy.

The technology shown in the film was also interesting to me, as a fan of science fiction based vehicles and environments I enjoyed the intricate and creative designs of the spaceships; they had a lot of curved and circular designs with corridors looping over and repeating on themselves.


Speaking of technology, this film features one of the scariest villains of all time: The HAL 9000 computer. The reason he is so scary is because he was designed by humans to achieve the most efficient results, and from that programming he sees humans as an obstruction, so he kills them. His monotone voice also adds to his scariness, the way he keeps the voice no matter what happens or who dies. But the most scary part of HAL is that with the fast evolution of technology we may have computers that are like him; able to think for themselves and outwit humans.

One factor of this film that I thought was interesting was that it was mostly dialogue free, allowing the imagery to tell the story, giving us a much more visual experience and as Stanley Kubrick has always utilised clever cinematography and camera techniques this fits.

However the film does have some elements that in my opinion lessen its appeal:
Some of the longer shots slow the pace of the film (painfully sometimes) and leaves you wanting the film to get to the point, if all these scenes were cut down the film would be much shorter.
A lot of the characters and concepts are underdeveloped, the bare basics are presented but not much more, the film could have been more interesting if more exposition was given.
Some of the scenes were head scratching at times due to their bizarre nature or lack of explanation.

However given that the film was made in the 1960s the visual and audio effects are extremely well done and the film undeniably looks beautiful.

Overall I wouldn't say it's my favorite movie ever, but it was an interesting experience to say the least.