Jan 20, 2003 12:05 PM
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(Updated Jan 20, 2003 12:05 PM)
For the last 20 years I have read countless reviews praising this film as the ultimate Si Fi movie of all time. I have been to several Film clubs that have seperate seminar sessions allocaated to discuss and evaluate this Film.
Finally I have decided to break my silence and speak my mind about this film. I will not attempt a detailed analysis of this film since it has been done by great reviewers before I was born. It is true this film excells in many aspects of film production techniques known to man in 1968, but then again utensils and cookware alone doesnot make a great meal. Where is the meat? The only drawback of this great film is story. This is an average movie. There is nothing clever in the film except the elaborate revolving sets and the space ship models. Although the gadgets 'envisioned' in the movie where already seen in countless, Star Trek episodes (1966), they where shown to be more realistic in this film. There are some very convincing scenes in the beginning of the film that show the effects of zero gravity, but the realism dies a sudden death when you see the effects of low gravity on the moon. This could be forgiven since the moon landing never took place till one year after the release of this film.
The story itself lacks a motive. 2001 is not about the evolution of man's intellect, nor is it about how drastically different our future is from our past. It's definitely not about aliens planting smoothly polished rectangular black stone all over the universe. It's not about space, a talking computer or about going to Jupiter. And in the end you know that this film is about nothing. Reading the book by A.C. Clark was more entertaining than watching the film, despite the fact that the book was printed after the release of the film. In total there is 6 minutes of moronic noise with nothing to see in the beginning and right after the intermission. It must have some profound meaning which normal people with average intelligence are not supposed to understand. Then there are countless painfully long slow motion scenes of the astronauts floating about in space. There is exactly 12 minutes of some kind of dream sequence. What demented purposes do these lengthy scenes serve? It forces me to believe that the last fifteen minutes of the movie was meant to be seen while you smoke some kind of banned substance. The movie has so many loose ends, which the makers of the movie claims, is the gist of the movie. The whole point of the movie is to totally confuse and de-stabilise the senses of paying film-goers. But that has already been done, rather beautifully, by the crew of ''Monty Python's Flying Circus''. This film is an insult on our intelligence. This movie pokes fun at our sensibility. It belittles the patrons of this artform. A film's objective is to tell a story, an Idea, in an entertaining manner.
Just because Stanely Kuberick does it, it does not necessarily mean its great cinema. This is definitely not an epic film and all the reviews comparing it to the real epics of cinema are in effect ridiculing some of the great movies of our time. This film is like throwing a line and bait into the water and waiting a very long time for a bite. And when you finally get a nice strong tug, knowing very well that you have a decent fish at the end of that line; You simply take your knife and cut the line away. And there goes your 10 pound fish with the bait, line and all. That's what this film is, a total waste of 2 hours and 28 minutes.
