2001: A Space Odyssey evaluation - First Draft

2001: A Space Odyssey is not an ordinary movie. It is incredibly expansive and deep. In fact, it's so deep that once I fell in, I couldn't see out of it. I may as well have been heading to Jupiter myself. Understandably, it doesn't have that same effect on everyone. Film critic Chris Barsanti put it best long after the film's 1968 release: "2001 certainly is a colossal bore, unless you're on its wavelength, in which case it's one of the greatest films of all time." I couldn't have said it better.
The novel and screenplay based upon it were written simultaneously, Clarke producing the story while legendary director Stanley Kubrick translated Clarke's thoughts into visuals.
The story begins in prehistoric times with an ape who, with the aid of an ominous black monolith, discovers bone tools and begins the evolutionary path that would lead to the modern human. Without so much as a fade, the movie throws us into Earth's orbit populated by satellites and space stations. Mankind's tools have come a long way. A buried artifact found on the moon is identical to the monolith that inspired the ape's earlier innovation. As astronauts excavate the buried structure it emits a high-pitched squeal. Another cut and 18 months later, we're somewhere between Earth and Jupiter about the spacecraft Discovery. Aboard are both human astronauts and an artificial intelligence computer, HAL-9000, who has never been known to make a mistake. HAL malfunctions (or does he?) as they reach their destination and the humans will have to battle their own creation while still surrounded by the mystery of the black monolith.
The film's brilliance lies in its attention to detail, and the meaning behind each and every one of those details. Nothing that is presented is an accident and nothing that is seen is there purely for style (though style is definitely present). For example, the spacecraft that carries Dr. Floyd to the space station early in the non-ape part of the movie, has wings. The significance would be lost on many, but this was one of Arthur C. Clarke's many glimpses into the future. He basically predicted the space shuttle, a craft that launches as a rocket, but lands as an airplane. He also was first to describe the geosynchronous communication satellite. There are over 300 of these satellites in orbit today allowing for global communication, television broadcasting, and weather forecasting.
The year 2001 has come and gone and the world depicted in the film is not quite reality, but even so, the film has an honest quality to it. Any movie's ability to convince the audience of something that they know not to be real is called suspension of disbelief. 2001 is one of the best, and maybe the first, science fiction film to do this well. Movie-goers, especially in 1968, didn't have to consciously justify what they were seeing. It took itself seriously and was taken seriously.