2001: Space Odyssey review (1968)
Jump into Stanley Kubrick’s mind.
The story starts off four million years ago with group of
apes awoke in the African desert to find a mysterious black bar in front of
them, they panic and slowly adjust to its existence by touching and feeling it.
Later one of the apes discovered that a bone can be used as a weapon and uses
this advantage to take over lands and killing prey for food. Fast-forward into the
future a group of astronauts finds the same mysterious black bar, called the
monolith, buried under the moon’s surface. The spacemen decided to take a
picture in front of it when the black bar sends a high pitched signal to tell
them to come to Jupiter. Eighteen months later a new set of astronauts with an artificial
intelligence robot named Hal 9000 under ago a mission to Jupiter. David and Frank
are running the spaceship while the rest of the crew are in cryogenic
hibernation. The crew had some doubts about this mission however Hal aims to
continue to make this a success as he believes it is incapable of error. One by
one Hal controls the ship in order to kill the crew members until it was just
one left, David. The main character ends up shutting down Hal and continues the
mission alone in a space pod, where he finally comes face to face with the Monolith
and under goes a weirdly bright and colourful visuals where he wakes up in a
pure white clean room where he continues sees his older self though different
timelines of his life to a point off his death where he witness the black bar again
and becomes reborn outside the Earth’s atmosphere…
The good points about this magnificent film is that the
soundtrack and audio really stands out with its iconic music and unforgettable audio
that mixes up perfectly with the visuals, for example if the camera would shooting
outside the spaceship and pod the audio cuts out completely giving u the
feeling of space not just the visuals. The original ideas and settings are
entertaining to watch, even though that there is a lot of slow movements in
this movie but it works really well for its tone however the film does it a bit
too much that it could end up boring. The best part about this movie is that the
ending just leaves you to question everything. What happened? What was the
black bar? Why was it made? Who made it? Why is David now a child floating in
space? What was the reason to show us David in different part of his older
life? It’s like the ending of “Inception” it just leaves it to your imagination
to find out for yourself.
The negative points is that the movie is slow but doesn't give
out much information of the characters during that long period of time, for
example: the three men that was in the cryogenic hibernation has very little screen
time therefore we can’t feel upset or pain for those who was killed by Hal. This
movie focus too much on its pacing than actual characters. Hal and David are
the only ones we know about and therefore we would care for David’s safety or
Hal’s success.
Overall this movie is an 8/10. Entertaining and worth
watching even if it’s just for the music or visuals, good use of camera angles
and deigns. This movie could have been improved if they took out some pointless
long duration shoots, e.g. the long spaceship that flies by, at first I couldn't
tell when it was going to end so I was left seeing the same shot over and over.
That aside it was still an entertaining and a great film.
“Matched Kubrick's photographic eye to a story about
watching, transformed him into a director of the epic, and made one giant leap
in sci-fi cinema that's never been matched.”-Brian Gibson.
“Only a few films are transcendent, and work upon our minds
and imaginations like music or prayer or a vast belittling landscape. Most
movies are about characters with a goal in mind, who obtain it after
difficulties either comic or dramatic. “2001: A Space Odyssey'' is not about a
goal but about a quest, a need.”-Roger Ebert
“Kubrick also presents the viewer with a lot of food for
thought about what it means to be human, and where the human race is going.
Yes, the ending is weird and hard to comprehend - but that's the nature of the
future. Kubrick and Clarke have started the task of envisioning it, now it's up
to the audience to continue.”-Simon Booth
1 comment:
Hey Jacky!
Please look back at my previous comments, on how to use quotes and reference correctly - basically, the quotes need to form part of your text, not be tagged on at the end. The idea for including them is to support your discussion or argument. For example, you would introduce the quote with something like,
'As Roger Ebert explains in his review, "...quote".(Ebert, 2014) From this it could be said that....'
Make sure that you label your images with Figure 1 etc, and reference them at the end (see below)
You need to compile a bibliography and an illustrations list at the end of your writing - see here on how to do that;
http://community.ucreative.ac.uk/Harvard-Referencing
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