2001: A Space Odyssey

1 9 6 7 (UK)

Although collaborators like writer Arthur C Clarke and effects gurus Wally Veevers and Douglas Trumbull were important to the success of 2001, the film is basically a triumph for its producer-director, Stanley Kubrick. No cinema epic had been so completely the vision of one man.

What is most remarkable about the film is that it has no stars (no pun intended) and very little plot. The relative  absence of dialogue allowed audiences to fully immerse themselves in the film as a visual and musical experience.

At the time 2001 was released of course, audiences were far less familiar with the hardware and spectacle of space travel than we are today. The film was released before the Apollo mission beamed back the first images from the moon, and Kubrick's creation of an authentic otherworldly experience had the appeal of novelty. Kubrick's pride and joy was "the centrifuge", a 40-foot revolving set, built at the cost of $750,000 by engineering firm Vickers, which would create the effects of weightlessness.

Initial screenings did not fare well. Predictably, a 160 minute movie consisting mainly of silence and (deliberately) banal dialog left critics and some audiences bemused and/or irritated. The New York Times called it "Boring". But Kubrick's meditation on the fate of man  suited the times perfectly and the movie was a hit, grossing over $40 million worldwide.

But the film is also full of very cerebral ideas and themes. It debates the relationship between Man and Technology. The most sympathetic character in the movie is the computer HAL. But a number of questions are  raised when HAL has a nervous breakdown - Man might have created the technology, but can he control it?

2001 is divided into three movements: The Dawn of Man, Mission to Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. All three parts are linked by the appearance at some stage of a mysterious rectangular monolith which seems to symbolize the next stage of knowledge towards which man is always aspiring. The film  was an enormous hit because it was a visual adventure on a scale that had not been seen on the screen before. Its success anticipated two important trends of the 1970's - The director as superstar, and the explosion of interest in films of fantasy and science fiction.

The music in 2001 is especially evocative, particularly the two pieces, Also Sprach Zarathustra (by Richard Strauss) and the Blue Danube waltz (by Johann Strauss). When the soundtrack record was released in 1969 it spent over a year on the album charts, reaching Number 3.