2001 A Space Odyssey Review

The film 2001 A space Odyssey is both a film and a novel, the author of the novel was Arthur C. Clarke and director and producer of the film was Stanley Kubrick. Both were released in 1968 and both tell a story of how life could be in the year 2001 and it is filmed in a documentary like style. It begins with the early life of man when we first discover tools, and then from then it jumps to the year 2001 to show how far man has come since that moment. It gives the view of 2001 as a technological wonderland where computers have their own minds and do not need human interference. Watching this film today one could realize that some of the predictions this film had in 1968 actually do exist, for example the videophone call is today called “Skype”.
While I watched this film there were some things that I liked and some things I didn’t as with any film, but as a telecommunications major the things I didn’t like made this film a bust for me. One thing this film is famous for is its lack of dialogue, true this makes the journey through space much more realistic, because there is no sound in space, but for me dialogue is a huge part of any film. Although the dialogue that was used in the film was well placed and well written the scenes without it seemed very long and drawn out, for example the scene where the character Dave goes to investigate on of the satellites, all you can hear is his breathing. Some of the scenes that had no dialogue had in its stead a powerful score; this is majority of the film, but it’s not a good substitute for my taste.
One of the things I did enjoy about the film was its creative use of props and use of green screen. The only thing that gives away the fact that this film was made in 1968 is the look of the characters and the look of some of the set. I believe that this was a huge thing for this film to achieve and is what probably led to development of the way the film Star Wars was shot when ever something was supposed to in space, because you actually felt as if you were watching an Astronaut documentary instead of a scripted film and if you can do this then you’ve made a great film as far as camera work and editing is concerned. But something else that bothered me about this film was its constant jumping around in the story. It leads you to believe the film will be following one character and then that person just completely disappears from the story.
This was a constant headache to me primarily because I was taught to always explain what happens to the character where as this film just goes on without an explanation, then again the lack of dialogue becomes an issue. Another problem with this constant jumping around is that there are scenes that make absolutely no since to the viewer, and also it almost never explains the significance of certain things, this a reference to the black object that appears three times in the film for no apparent reason, and even towards the end of the film when it appears its about to explained it isn’t. I believe this is one of the many reasons that a lot of people who have seen 2001 A Space Odyssey say that they do not get what’s going on and are left with a sense of confusion.
Over all this was a good movie even with its faults, because of its creativity. But because of the direction the creators decided to go in its simply not a movie for me. I’m not bashing or praising, these are just some of the things that I observed while watching. In a final note I would like to add that knowing who the director of this film should lead any watcher to anticipate this style of movie and if you were watch any of Stanley Kubrick’s other films you might not feel the same. But I will let you decide how you feel about this film.
Works Cited: www.YouTube.com, www.Wikipedia.org