Stanley Kubrick
2001: Odissea nello spazio

2001: A Space Odyssey is a countdown to tomorrow, a roadmap of man's destiny, a quest for eternity and infinity.

Masterfully shot by Stanley Kubrick in '68, when special effects were not yet at today's level, it stands as one of the pioneering films of the science fiction genre, which will inspire many other directors in the future. Now imagine being at the cinema, in the year 1968, sitting in your seat waiting for the film to start. Suddenly the lights dim and the screen becomes black, as if the film is about to start but nothing appears, and a disturbing music begins... This lasts several minutes, then there it is, finally, the MGM logo appears, and to the notes of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Strauss, the planet Earth on the first note, the Sun on the second and third. Immediately after, Kubrick gives us an original theory on how man acquired his own intelligence, distinguishing him from the apes. If on one side this acquisition is positive, on the other it results in the first example of conflict between "men" who come to kill each other, as we have learned to do for millennia. And there it appears for the first time, the monolith that we find again later in the film, accompanied, as with each of its appearances, by a haunting melody. Then, thanks to one of the most phantasmagoric cuts ever conceived, Kubrick catapults us forward by millennia, precisely to 2001, where we find the second issue interpreted and posed in this film: the relationship between man and machine. And here, the rebellion of the HAL 9000 robot makes us reflect: will we ever get to this? Will we ever create creatures that can equal or surpass humans, without margin of error? But most importantly, can a machine be so perfect and imperfect at the same time as to have feelings? In the film, the answer is yes because the phrase pronounced by the robot before being deactivated is emblematic: "I'm afraid."

Subsequently, one of the most shocking, mysterious, and indecipherable endings in the history of cinema: the protagonist, left alone, is sucked, after a trip I would call hallucinogenic, into a dimension at the edge of space and time, particularly into a room where, no longer bound by time, he ages in a few minutes until becoming himself on his deathbed; it is there that he encounters the monolith for the last time, probably a higher entity, and where he becomes a "starchild" or "child of the space", now in its embryo dominating the earth from above, as if he had completed a cycle, as if he had now become a higher being. And it is right here that a certain concept of infinity and eternity is expressed, difficult to grasp, if not imperceptible.

In short, this film with a thousand facets, characterized by long silences and memorable sequences, is one of the milestones of cinema, which will never be forgotten and will continue to excite, inspire, and enchant entire generations.