2001: A Space Odyssey

Science fiction in four parts. There are no people in the first. A group of ape-like creatures fights over a waterhole, and one morning they wake to find a black rectangle standing in front of them. Then one of them works out that a bone can be a tool. The bone is thrown into the air and the film jumps millions of years. The second part is on the Moon. One of the same rectangles is dug out at a base, and when it reaches sunlight it sends a signal. The third is on a ship bound for Jupiter. Two astronauts are awake, three scientists are asleep, and a computer runs the ship. HAL will not accept that he made a mistake. The two astronauts discuss shutting him down and HAL reads their lips. From there the film is a reckoning. A door, a helmet, and a memory being switched off. The fourth part explains nothing. A gate of light, a room, a bed and an infant. What the narrative is interested in is not technology but the leap: the film lines up tool, weapon, ship and artificial mind as links in one chain and shows the next step. There is very little dialogue. Nobody speaks in the first part, and the most human character in the film is a computer. The novel and the screenplay were written together. Arthur C. Clarke and the director worked at the same time and the book appeared alongside the film. The effects were made without computers. A special scanning technique was developed for the star gate and a vast wheel was built for the rotation. The film won the director his only Academy Award, for visual effects. Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood and William Sylvester are in the cast. Stanley Kubrick directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes slow, quiet cinema that explains nothing. Who it is not for: anyone looking for plot; the film tells you nothing for long stretches, deliberately.