Kubrick's Strange and Peculiar Masterpiece
One of the most strangest of all Hollywood pictures has got to be Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. This film was made for MGM, it cost a considerable amount of money, and is a science-fiction picture, yet there is no way that this movie could ever be bankrolled by a major studio today. The film is artsy, mysterious, and utterly mystifying. To be sure, the film is also a one-of-a-kind work of cinematic art, but I wouldn't blame most people if they said that this was a very hard film to get into. For one thing, at least forty minutes of the movie contain not a single utterance of dialogue. The most developed and most compelling character is a computer, and the most emotional scene, if it can be called that, is when the computer is disconnected. And despite the fact that there are many scenes in space, with spaceships and other things flying about, 2001 is not a rip-roaring adventure.......
The film begins in the dawn of time. We see ape-like creatures going about their business, being attacked by tigers and other creatures, fighting with other apes for water. Then, one day, the apes discover this huge, perfectly designed black panel, embedded in the earth. We don't have any idea what the hell it represents, but, in the next scene, an ape discovers that inanimate objects can be used to smash things. It plays with a bone, and it discovers that by using force, the bone will smash things upon impact. This comes in handy the next time it fights off other apes for a drink.
Suddenly, we're transported to space, the year 2001. A number of astronauts and researchers have discovered a similar black object on one of Jupiter's moons. This discovery is held under strong security. A number of astronauts go to the moon, but something happens. This necessitates another mission to Jupiter, in which a number of astronauts are on board a ship controlled by the most advanced computer ever conceived, the HAL 9000. This computer is equipped to not just speak, but to basically behave like the smartest human possible. It thinks, and expresses itself as if it were a human, albeit a very cold, calculating and rigid one.
The HAL 9000 is most definitely the best character of the piece. His attribute is that he has been given "emotions" and has the capacity for thought and reason. The film logically infers that, if a computer has been given the ability to mimic human behavior, of course it would mimic the bad as well as the good. When HAL makes what the crew conceives to be an error, they talk amongst themselves while locked up in a pod that perhaps they ought to disconnect HAL before he makes more serious errors. But HAL, unbeknownst to the crew, can read lips.... and so he, in the natural, primitive instinct of self-preservation, unleashes his counterattack.
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