2001: A Space Odyssey is my least favourite film of all time. I don't think I've finished a movie feeling angered--as if I'd wasted my time--before or since. A friend of mine was really shocked to hear this, so I thought I'd write about it.
First off, I think 2001 is a bad film; though I feel it's quite awful, I know it did some things well, and featured some cutting-edge direction. It has an innovative film score, groundbreaking special effects, and that bit 3/4 of the way through the film with HAL 3000 is fascinating. In this way, I suppose I see why the film is so well-liked.
The problem is, 2001 is dreadfully boring and pointless. Let's start with boring: almost every scene in the film is stretched far longer than it needs to be to get its point across. I remember in particular one scene where a space shuttle was simply flying across the moon; to illustrate that, Kubrick (the director) shot a scene where a shuttle flies slowly across a barren moonscape--FOR OVER 20 SECONDS. I don't know how long it was exactly, but it was at least that long, and I got the message easily, and long before that 20 seconds was up. (The message? "Some people are travelling across the moon in a shuttle." There wasn't much moon scenery to note.) Worse, the climax of the film is 20 minutes (minutes!) of flashing lights. What purpose does that serve? 3 minutes into that "scene", I think I got the picture. There are many, many scenes like this--even the few scenes with dialogue in the film are spoken slowly and dryly. sometimes I wish Michael Bay would be around to direct this thing, because at least he'd have the decency to blow something up.
I suppose a boring film would be all well and fine if it had a good point to make about something, and made it well. 2001: A Space Odyssey does neither of those things. The film has a lot of interesting imagery, recurring symbols, etc.: giant black monoliths appearing at different points in space and time, for example. but the film is so vague and indefinite so often that you can't connect the odd images with anything real. There are no clear answers in this film, which means the audience has to slog through this movie only to find that those slow, symbolism-heavy scenes don't have anything to say.
My complaint with the film, then, is that it fails to entertain. It has nothing to say: the film asks you to sit through 2 1/2 hours of slow-moving drama, and then has the indecency to demand that you decide the film's meaning for yourself. That might sound shallow, but a boring film without meaning fails to satisfy any purpose as a film. Sure, the rich imagery will have appeal to some--but then, perhaps the book version would be better. You could read that at any pace you like, and I hear the book is clearer, too.
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