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Rating: I would like to ask just one question, I know I won't get an answer, but I want to ask it anyway: I would like to know how the hell Stanley Kubrick in 1968 (thus worked on it years earlier) managed to produce a work like "2001 - A Space Odyssey"!!!! We will never understand it. No "Making Of" and no documentary reveal enough, I think it will remain one of the greatest mysteries... of the universe!
What astounds is the quality-time ratio, a perfect film, a work that wouldn't seem so realistic even with trillions of modern special effects. No special effect in computer graphics could give that sense of realism that Kubrick gave in the 60s!! Who collaborated on the film? NASA? Scientists from all over the world? Nuclear astrophysicists? Or directly the aliens? I don't think the director did everything with a simple Hollywood crew. Some even speculate that Kubrick was responsible for the FAKE footage of the first man on the moon. A very credible theory for someone like me who thinks that man has never been on the moon. Not man... but Kubrick has!
In a few words: a small group of monkeys, at the dawn of man, spot an alien monolith, one of them learns that a bone can be used as a weapon... and from this small evolution comes straight to the future with one of the greatest jumps in the history of cinema. And here we are in the colonized universe, everything has changed, but the monolith is still there.. this time on the moon. A group of astronauts goes to visit it and they are disturbed by radio waves emitted by the alien slab. Years and years later, Commander David Bowman finds himself on a mission and... also he grapples with this eternal monolith. After facing an unforgettable man-machine battle (HAL, with its red eye is now legend!, an onboard computer that after making a calculation error takes a form of consciousness and reacts to the astronauts for fear of being disconnected, I think the monolith gave it consciousness, maybe it passed by that area :-) ).. "HAL open the pod bay doors!") he encounters a third monolith, near Jupiter, which unleashes a sort of "black hole" that sucks him to the edges of the universe...
From here.. the odyssey of Bowman in a vortex of alien landscapes, stars, unexplored galaxies, and the view of the universe unknown to us... which ends in a baroque house where Bowman sees himself age, die, and be reborn in the form of a giant fetus in a space placenta!! (?) the fetus looks towards the earth.
This plot summarized in a few lines is the "pretext" (so to speak) for Kubrick to stage a work of art of images and sounds, using photography and optical effects that are stunning! The filters used for the colors are incredible, the models of the spaceships never recreated with such precision again... (see that CRAP called "Independence Day"). The film was criticized (and still is) for its extreme slowness. A slowness that, however, is fundamental for grasping the thousand interpretations that can be given to a work of this kind. No frantic editing, no action scenes. "Star Wars" let's leave it to Lucas! Here every single action is shot in real-time, with few cuts, Bowman has to go to repair a malfunction with his capsule? This happens almost without editing. The spaceship opens, closes, turns, starts, and... walks.. walks.. walks.. with the silence of deep space. The viewer thus has all the time to ponder what is happening, on what they have seen before, they let themselves be lulled by the space atmospheres and think... reason... unlike modern films which with their epileptic editing don't even give you time to blink your eyes, otherwise, you risk missing eight bombs that explode. The poetry, the magic, the reflection, the mysticism, in one word... Art! This film is art. Interpret it as you wish, but it remains one of the greatest works of art ever created.
What unsettles, more than the end.. is the beginning. Music without images! Penetrating, messianic music, dark screen... the viewer is catapulted into an unknown environment... it's impossible not to be moved even without any image... after a few minutes... the most beautiful soundtrack ever made for a science fiction film starts suddenly showing us the universe and the earth in their origins.... I have six meters of goosebumps!!!! Who are we?, where do we come from?, why? But above all, where are we going? A film for a cerebral trip.
In a society like today’s, made of frantic films, idiotic shows like MTV, a schizophrenic lifestyle... we should take the young people, gather them in a cinema, and show them this film. To find themselves, their own self, meditate and... breathe! I feel reborn. I am ready for the odyssey.
Bowman... I'm coming!
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Other reviews
By iside
"The black Monolith is always present, it is God, it is the Root of Being, the Number, the Consciousness."
"Hal’s death is the film’s most dramatic part, as if a man had died, as if a PC had feelings."
By Babel
This film is simply immense. Attempting to explain it would be like trying to objectify Being.
This work should simply be watched, it should not be understood or analyzed.
By Valeriorivoli
The strength of this film lies in its ellipticity, in its polysomic reference to multiple layers of interpretation.
Man comes from the stars, he has within him a fragment of divine mind shared with other technological alien races of the Universe.
By Stebre
2001: A Space Odyssey is a countdown to tomorrow, a roadmap of man’s destiny, a quest for eternity and infinity.
The phrase pronounced by the robot before being deactivated is emblematic: "I’m afraid."
By Mayham
"Being aware of one’s limits is an essential condition for man."
"2001: A Space Odyssey is not a mere film; it is the reckoning between monkeys and astronauts, the darkness of the soul, and the light of reason."
