You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film... Stanley KubrickAnd so mavens, with Kubrick's come-hither invitation, feel free to surf the Web at will, questing for 2001: A Space Odyssey meaning. Kubrick never spelled out his own.
2001 is the original seminal epic big-budget sci-fi movie. Before you check out this site: (http://www.underview.com/2001.html,) make sure you've hours to spare.
Everything basic is at: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey
Some vintage classics, neglected and forgotten, take a generation to come of age. Citizen Kane released in 1941, only garnered critical acclaim after WWII. The Wizard of Oz (1939) became a classic only with the arrival of NBC coloured television (1956). Casablanca (1942), didn't become iconic until the 50s when the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square played it during exam week, a tradition that still endures.
2001: A Space Odyssey got mixed reviews from NY know-it-all smartpants reviewers, who knew everything there was to know about movies. Pauline Kael (New Yorker) called it a monumentally unimaginative movie. Stanley Kauffmann (New Republic) wrote, a film that is so dull, it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity for the sake of which Kubrick has allowed it to become dull. Renata Adler (NYT): ..somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring. Variety called it: Big, beautiful, but plodding sci-fi epic…A major achievement in cinematography and special effects, 2001 lacks dramatic appeal to a large degree and only conveys suspense after the halfway mark. Andrew Sarris (Village Voice): one of the grimmest films I have ever seen in my life…2001 is a disaster because it is much too abstract to make its abstract points. John Simon: a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines…and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans.
Check out: http://www.kubrick2001.com/
Scientists speculated for Kubrick (and Arthur C Clarke) what computer technology would be like in 2001, generally optimistic that machines with HAL's capabilities could do any work a man can do. Forty years on, only a few technical details of 2001: A Space Odyssey have dated. Pan-Am no longer flies; we don't yet have space stations nor interplanetary vehicles. And yet the film's views on human evolution, nuclear war, technology, artificial intelligence, extraterrestrial life, seem as asture now as then. While the film is scientifically inaccurate in minor details - natural language processing, lip reading and even commonsense reasoning for example - you will spot laptops and notepads, used to view news broadcasts from Earth.
Arthur C Clarke: ...we set out with the deliberate intention of creating a myth. (The Odyssean parallel clear in our minds.) Quite early in the game I went around saying, not very loudly, "M-G-M doesn't know this yet, hut they're paying for the first $10,000,000 religious movie." I might mention that we have recently discovered-this was quite a shock--that there is a Buddhist sect which worships a large, black, rectangular slab. The analogy of the Kaaba has also been mentioned; though I certainly never had it in mind at the time, the fact that the Black Stone sacred to the Muslims is reputed to be a meteorite is a more than interesting coincidence.
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OK, for another perspective on 2001: A Space Odyssey and the vasstness of space, this one is a stunner! Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q&feature=fvsr
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