What makes a movie which is clearly outdated like 2001: A Space Odyssey a classic film which cannot be forgotten? Living in 2007, we will reach 2010 long before many of the technological advances shown in 2001 are realized. Yet, if we ignore the erroneous dating of the film, there is something special about 2001 which makes it a must see even for those who do not enjoy the science fiction genre. Is it the special effects? Certainly they are spectacular even for today’s standards. But the movie is more than a special effects film. It’s a celebration of the triumph of humanity as it reaches towards the stars with a hint of the dangers we must face if we are to get there.
2001 is a slow, ponderous epic with an ending which could only make any real sense in the 1960s. A movie of its caliber or style could not be made today except as a kind of art house film; people want action and excitement, not the daily life of astronauts in space. Yet, when all the cheap thrills of the summer blockbusters are gone, movies and stories like 2001 will remain in our psyche and will continue to have an influence in our culture and in our thinking into the foreseeable future. Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick excelled themselves here: despite their subsequent fame, neither could create anything which rivaled their 1968 film.
HAL-9000 is every bit as fascinating as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster for many of the same reasons. Yet, like the Terminator and Matrixseries which came after, it also presents to us a more compelling presentation of the dangers of science: a crazy AI computer program seems far more likely to one day exist and turn upon its creator and master than Frankenstein’s creation of life ex nihilo. Are we ready for the future? Do we have the wisdom to create? Is there, perhaps, a reflection of a point C.S. Lewis made to Clarke (they were friends) in 2001: “…Technology is per se neutral: but a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the universe,” C.S. Lewis, Letter Dec. 7, 1943 to Arthur C. Clarke in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Volume II. ed. Walter Hooper (San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, 2004), 594? Is HAL-9000 a representation of the marvels of humanity or the creation of its own self-consuming cancer? Or is it a little of both? And if it is represents a technological cancer, can it be cured?
Clearly there are many questions which can be put to Clarke about 2001. We might not agree with his humanistic approach nor his New Age like spirituality. We do not have to in order to appreciate the film and its many merits. As a presentation of the human odyssey, especially as we reach for the future, it shows us a journey which we as a race might one day actually make. There can be no doubt about it: 2001 is a movie without equal, and its influence is widespread in the film industry. It is a difficult film to watch, not because it shows too much scientific technobabble, but because its pace almost seems to match the pace of evolution and because its ending, while amusing, is strangely anti-climatic and unsatisfying. What was the point of those last several minutes? Despite these and many other problems, 2001 is an undeniable classic and rightfully earns 4/4 stars.
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