The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #44: "2001: A Space Odyssey"

The 2022-2024 Film Journal Entry #44: "2001: A Space Odyssey"

The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #44

By Xavier E. Palacios

"2001: A Space Odyssey"

4 out of 5

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Rated G

At the dawn of humanity, a monolith embeds ape-men with the knowledge to advance to the next stage of human evolution. In the future, scientists discover another monolith buried in the moon. The crew of the Discovery One spaceship ventures across the solar system to Jupiter to further investigate the monolith phenomenon, and their perfect supercomputer, the HAL 9000, fatally betrays them. At Jupiter, the final crew member journeys beyond the infinite.

Before I say another word about this film, I will absolutely make one matter perfectly, irrevocably clear.

I am not going to make one gosh dang mention about this film's history, fandom, or legacy. I will not be discussing the aggravating cultists of director Stanley Kubrick. I will not be talking about this picture's vast number of theories, interpretations, parodies, and adoration for over fifty years. I will not be tackling the tale's impact on cinema and science fiction. To be blunt, even if I was not aiming to abridge these remaining entries for this film journal, I simply have no time or patience to dive into the "film bro", "film buff", and "cinephile" (seriously, everyone knows what that last word sounds like, right?) culture that counts this flick as one of its chief heralds.

To illustrate why I am thoroughly avoiding these topics others would say I am compelled, nay, forced to discuss, I will make one comment. Prior, as a kid, I had seen bits of 2001: A Space Odyssey, (the actual film and not any of the multitude of parodies), on TV. The piece helped me first learn the exact nature of the void that is outer space. As a teenager, I picked up the novelization of the film, written by 2001's co-screenwriter, the esteemed Arthur C. Clarke, from a book fair and read a bit of the text. Beforehand, I never would have guessed a movie about a killer computer would somehow involve ape-men millions and millions of years ago. I watched more of the film on Netflix back in the day but did not have the chance to finish the tale.

All this time, considering the universal worship of the flick by every wannabe movie critic, maker, fanboy, and professor, I thought I was missing what made 2001 so special because I did not yet have all the puzzle pieces that make up this seminal work of cinema and sci-fi. Surely my presumption was the case since everyone, like my own mother, can quote the film's most famous exchange:

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

But now that I have seen the entirety of 2001 one way through, I know now that I have once again been bamboozled, manipulated, bullied, coerced, and utterly tricked by that heinous, despicable culture of self-professed "cinephiles", (again, everyone is just okay without that word sounds?).

When the film ended, my first thought was, "Really? 2001? This is the film that gets a free pass by society, gets to be considered high-art, an epitome of sci-fi, and a cinematic classic?" Oh, not because I think 2001 is a bad film undeserving of praise. No, my displeased fervor is aimed squarely at the fanboys of cinema who have long sung hosannas to the ideals promoted by filmmakers like director Quentin Tarantino: champions of the pure way to experience the medium of film. They have been telling me for years how I have been watching the wrong movies and not liking the right ones. I always distrusted them and now I have irrefutable evidence that I have always been right to say, "Screw 'em."