My Mind is Going, Dave...I Can Feel It

Now experiencing a resurgence due to its time having finally come, and soon to celebrate a major re-release this fall, Stanley Kubrick's 1968 science fiction classic is as visually stunning as it is thought provoking. The contemplation of man's place in the universe mixed with some good old man versus machine drama and more than a little awe inspiring technical brilliance spawned what has become the space opera that all others will forever be held up to.

The science fiction genre had been around for years, as early as the seminal Fritz Lang masterpiece Metropolis in 1926 and even earlier. It lost its place of popularity somewhat over the next twenty-some odd years before creating a groundswelling of new support in the fifties, with such schlock classics as The Day the Earth Stood Still and When Worlds Collide. But the genre was mired in largely preposterous, disposable entertainment value B films. It would take the collaboration of leading science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke and one of the greatest emerging filmmakers of the sixties to finally turn sci-fi into true art.

Over the course of four long years, Kubrick and Clarke transformed their vision (Clarke wrote the novel more or less based on their collaborative screenplay) into something that had never been seen on movie screens before, an incredibly realistic space adventure that focused less on the search for "little green men" and more on answering the bigger questions about mankind, the advancements in technology, and our place in the universe. The results are nothing sort of astounding.

Employing some of the most skilled cinematic craftsmen of the day, Kubrick and company created a world filled with space traveling vessels (pre-moon landing, keep in mind) and high-tech machinery in which to set their epic struggle of man with computer. The sets are breathtaking in their attention to detail, and the utterly magnificent use of cinematography and classical music add to the comfortingly otherworldly and futuristic mood, without making it all that different from the way things were and are today.

What is largely pointed to as the film's most frustrating aspect is that it is very slow in its unfolding of the plot and spends incredible amounts of time panning over open space and technical gadgets. Also, many find the ending incomprehensible and purposefully confusing. Kubrick himself would say that it wouldn't surprise him if everyone who saw the film had a different impression of what it meant. Does this make the film a flawed work of obvious technical brilliance? Hardly. 2001 does as much to make you think as it does to amaze you with its stunning visuals.

The crew's struggle to survive against the developing a mind of its own computer can largely be construed as criticizing mankind's growing reliance on machines to do their work. Thus, spending so much time detailing the scope of the space operation is necessary and purposeful. This also applies to how the film unfolds the relation between the crew members and the malfunctioning brain of the ship HAL, layer by layer, but building inevitably to the final confrontation and slow, painful de-construction, followed by the only real effective lightshow in film history (Spaceballs parody not withstanding). And then on to the truly bizarre conclusion, which you simply have to see to believe and judge for yourself.

2001 is an obvious choice for a second look, here in the year of its name. Ok, so maybe what they posited in 1968 didn't exactly come true as far as how technology would advance, but literary or cinematic prediction of this type is rarely accurate in literal terms. But the message is even more relevant now than thirty-three years ago, as we become more and more dependent on computers and technology to make our lives simpler. Will this trend be reversed any time in the near future? Probably not. Is it potentially dangerous? Isn't this one of the things the film is ultimately trying to make you think about? And, like so much of the interpretation that is done on this picture, it relies most definitely on the individual viewer, and not on someone telling you what it does or does not have to say, so I'll end this, my 100th review, on that note.