Cameronius Explodius McMonius

WARNING: Spoilers will be necessary in the main review for me to talk about this movie in the amount of detail I want to. Final verdict will have spoiler-free conclusion

 

2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968 and was directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is about humanity setting out on an expedition through space to look for a mysterious black monolith which leads to many more discoveries on the way.

 

In my opinion this film defines Stanley Kubrick perfectly; the thing that makes him unique as a filmmaker is how he uses themes and double meanings in all of his films in such an effective way and there aren't really any other directors out there who use this feature to the standard that he did. This movie is full to the brim with themes and I think they are the best and most interesting in any Kubrick film that I have seen so far and also, they make this movie interpretable in many different ways.

 

The film is more of a work of art than anything. This definitely isn't a film that you'd just sit and casually watch for a fun film but is instead one that requires deep analysis to fully appreciate and understand. The movie was specifically made to leave questions for the viewers to work out the answers to and, in the words of the original novel's author Arthur C. Clarke, "If you understand '2001' completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."

 

Without knowing what year this was made, I never would have guessed that this was from 1968; the visuals are far ahead of their time (some of the best visuals I have ever seen in a movie ever) and also the themes and storylines are in fact more relevant today than they were nearly 50 years ago, in 1968. The most obvious themes are those of human evolution, fear of the capabilities of artificial intelligence and also extra-terrestrial life. There's likely many more hidden in there too waiting to be discovered.

 

I find that this movie is much more than just an odyssey through space, but an odyssey of discovering what the human race truly is and the evolution of it. Humans constantly want to discover and I personally believe that the reason for our existence is for us to discover; this movie is all about discovery and all of the discoveries are further looks into the history of the human race: the start of the movie shows humans in the first stage of evolution (apes) and shows them discovering how to overcome and enemy when they are guided by the mysterious black monolith. Later on in the film humanity seems to have progressed in technology due to how the monolith helped progress the race all those years ago. Then at the end of the film, the main character experiences the evolution of a human itself and when he sees the monolith he is reborn and sees what the human race is from an entirely different perspective and thus discovers more. I think that the monolith represents the next step of humans' advancements and also the key to discovery and the mysterious aliens are trying to show the humans truly what they actually are. I also noticed that whenever there's a discovery the fantastic main theme plays too which is a representation of the next step in evolution I'm guessing. So, to sum it all up, it's all about discovering what we have already discovered.

 

Another prominent theme that I briefly mentioned earlier that is very relevant today is how technology has affected the human race and how dependent we are on it too. This film shows a stage where humanity is in fear of the capabilities of it because of how far it has advanced and looking at it, technology seems to be taking the same evolutionary route as the humans which compares them to how similar they are which is interesting. I'm very surprised and impressed at the same time that the concept of technology becoming this huge was thought up all those years ago, when technology (while it did still exist) was nowhere near as advanced as it is today and also being nowhere near as big of a thing as it is now. The 'character' that depicts the theme of technology is the A.I HAL-9000 (who by the way has a great voice performance) and you can see how human the character of Hal is which also displays to us in real life how much like us technology is becoming and how soon it may even replace us. Going a bit off-topic here but this theme is also something that was displayed in a popular internet theory called 'The Pixar Theory' which is basically about how all of the films made by Pixar are linked, but anyway that theory also shows how technology grows over time to the point where it overcomes humans which I do think is an effective theme overall because of how well it is portrayed and also how relevant it is in real life, especially in this time period.

 

The narrative of the film is mainly told through a series of visuals and music rather than dialogue (although there is some dialogue throughout, it isn't the main way of telling the story). The choice of using visuals was definitely the best option for this film and tells the story in a better and more fitting way than just simply dialogue would have done. The music is amazing and fits the film perfectly and as I mentioned earlier, the visuals are absolutely outstanding for 1968; there's a sequence which is nearly 10 minutes of just visuals but I sat through the entire sequence without skipping or fast-forwarding because of how amazing the visuals were.

 

Overall, this is an outstanding film and rightfully one of the greatest films ever made, however I think it does require deep analysis to truly appreciate. The themes explored are some of the best in a Kubrick film and appear to be relevant in many different time periods too which I believe is the reason why they are so effective. This isn't a film you'd just sit down and watch casually but if you're someone who really does appreciate the art of film then you'll likely love this film after analysis. This film truly displays the genius that Kubrick was.

I'm not going to give this film a score as I just don't feel that I can, however this has got to be one of the greatest films that I have ever seen.