2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
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 dialogue 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 symbolise the next stage of knowledge towards which
man is always aspiring.
The music in 2001 is especially evocative, particularly the two
pieces, Thus Spake Zarathustra (by Richard Strauss) and
the Blue Danube waltz (by Johann Strauss).
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 1970s - The
director as superstar, and the explosion of interest in films of
fantasy and science fiction.
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