If 2001 is your #1 movie, tell me why

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No, I not writing an article hating on the movie. I've seen it once years ago and I liked it a lot because visually and thematically it's way better than other movies of its time. But #1? It's a little too slow and needs more of a personal touch. But if it's your #1 please explain in case I missed something.

Btw, some notes: My number 1 is The Godfather, my favorite Kubrick film is Full Metal Jacket, and I like artsy sci-fi so bear in mind my favorite movie of this specific genre is Solaris (1972).

One more thing: I'm watching 2001 right now, so I can try to spot whatever users tell me about.



No, I not writing an article hating on the movie. I've seen it once years ago and I liked it a lot because visually and thematically it's way better than other movies of its time. But #1? It's a little too slow and needs more of a personal touch. But if it's your #1 please explain in case I missed something.

Btw, some notes: My number 1 is The Godfather, my favorite Kubrick film is Full Metal Jacket, and I like artsy sci-fi so bear in mind my favorite movie of this specific genre is Solaris (1972).

One more thing: I'm watching 2001 right now, so I can try to spot whatever users tell me about
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If you're watching 2001 right now and also reading MoFo you're not focusing your full attention on the movie...and 2001 is a movie that needs full uninterrupted attention.



If you're watching 2001 right now and also reading MoFo you're not focusing your full attention on the movie...and 2001 is a movie that needs full uninterrupted attention.
I'm pausing occasionally and quickly checking up. Say every 15 minutes. Also, I pretty much remember the whole thing so I'm not worried.





I love Tarkovsky's Solaris, as well as Soderbrgh's re-make. Most days I would even personally rate the Tarkovsky over the Kubrick. And while I know both of those Lem adaptations have an emotional component that 2001 does not I don't see how somebody can appreciate one so much and be mystified that the other floors people. You seem to be saying that for your personal taste you need more humanity for your tippy of the top choices, which is absolutely valid and understandable. But it is also clearly not the only way to love a piece of cinema. This feels very much to me like, "I love strawberry ice cream and hate chocolate ice cream. Now write me an essay on why I should love chocolate."

It is simply different taste. There's no deep mystery to unravel. You don't have to like it. No matter what the 2001 people say you aren't going to suddenly see the light and adore it like you never have before, not any more than you are going to talk them out of their position.
__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



I'm pausing occasionally and quickly checking up. Say every 15 minutes. Also, I pretty much remember the whole thing so I'm not worried.
It's cool, I'm just saying that 2001 is the kind of movie one watches on a big tv screen, with the lights off and the house quiet. At least for maximum effect.



^I might do that one day.





I love Tarkovsky's Solais, as well as Soderbrgh's re-make. Most days I would even personally rate the Tarkovsky over the Kubrick. And while I know both of those Lem adaptations have an emotional component that 2001 does not I don't see how somebody can appreciate one so much and be mystified that the other floors people. You seem to be saying that for your personal taste you need more humanity for your tippy of the top choices, which is absolutely valid and understandable. But it is also clearly not the only way to love a piece of cinema. This feels very much to me like, "I love strawberry ice cream and hate chocolate ice cream. Now write me an essay on why I should love chocolate."

It is simply different taste. There's no deep mystery to unravel. You don't have to like it. No matter what the 2001 people say you aren't going to suddenly see the light and adore it like you never have before, not any more than you are going to talk them out of their position.

I don't need anyone to agree or disagree. I just want to hear some arguments for the specific opinion because I've never heard a reason for it to be number one before. Besides, who knows? I might learn something from it. It's easier to enjoy a 10 than a 9.5.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
No, I not writing an article hating on the movie. I've seen it once years ago and I liked it a lot because visually and thematically it's way better than other movies of its time. But #1? It's a little too slow and needs more of a personal touch. But if it's your #1 please explain in case I missed something.

Btw, some notes: My number 1 is The Godfather, my favorite Kubrick film is Full Metal Jacket, and I like artsy sci-fi so bear in mind my favorite movie of this specific genre is Solaris (1972).

One more thing: I'm watching 2001 right now, so I can try to spot whatever users tell me about.
E-Transfer me $100 and I'll give you the names of the people who put it in their top spot!!!
__________________
"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews



2001 is not a movie simply about keeping track of plot points. It's an immersive experience, one that you are meant to lose your sense of self in. This is one of the main reasons its pacing is comparatively slow to other movies. But it's not too slow for what it is trying to accomplish, which is create a sense of Infinite space and make us aware of our own relationship to passing time.


And, yes, it is one of the only movies ever made truly and unequivocally deserving of being labeled as the greatest of all time.



2001 is not a movie simply about keeping track of plot points. It's an immersive experience, one that you are meant to lose your sense of self in. This is one of the main reasons its pacing is comparatively slow to other movies. But it's now too slow for what it is trying to accomplish, which is create a sense of Infinite space and make us aware of our own relationship to passing time.


And, yes, it is one of the only movies ever made truly and unequivocally deserving of being labeled as the greatest of all time.

This post makes a lot of sense to me. Although my understanding of the film feels improved, your reasoning for its slowness being overplayed practically keeps the film at the same rating on my scale. The slowness and atmospheric moments are drawn out longer than necessary.



Some movies are more rewarding when watched alone
I've always been the only one in my family who would watch it, so no worries there.


Oh ****. I know a remake would 99% likely be a bad idea (it can be done but it wouldn't be the same), but I just thought of the perfect person to voice HAL if there ever was one: Alessandro Juliani, L from Death Note. I would pay to see that even if the movie got a 0% on RT.



Finished it. And completely against my expectations, I'm leaving it exactly where I left it on my top films chart. Currently that's just making the top 200. This doesn't usually happen when I watch a movie more than once for the sale of re-rating. The movie would be perfect if it weren't so long.



The trick is not minding
I’m not sure how many actually had it their “#1” so much as it was ranked quite highly by enough to warrant its point total. Remember, when going over these films, it helps to look at what came before, and what came after, and how it not only influenced a genre, but film as a whole.

As noted by Crumb, it is an experience. And one that’s not necessarily for everyone.



2001 is not a movie simply about keeping track of plot points. It's an immersive experience, one that you are meant to lose your sense of self in. This is one of the main reasons its pacing is comparatively slow to other movies. But it's not too slow for what it is trying to accomplish, which is create a sense of Infinite space and make us aware of our own relationship to passing time.

Now, I really want to revisit this... on acid!



I agree with what’s been said about the movie needing absolute attention and a great setup for watching it.

One needs to immerse oneself, so checking phones, having multiple breaks or whatever will ruin the experience. You might still walk away feeling the same but until you have given it your full attention, beginning to end, you really haven’t seen it properly.

And multiple watches is always a great idea. I think it took me three watches to love 2001...



Okay:


WARNING: spoilers below
After a few minutes of orchestral strings making an aimless, dissonant racket, the first thunderous notes of "Thus Spake Zarathrustra" begin to play, as we're greeted with a sudden close-up of the moon, before it's superseded by the sight of a newborn Sun cresting over the Earth, the two heavenly spheres uniting in the most perfect of alignments, and, as the musical piece booms towards its climax, a title card announces the name of the film we're about to have the pleasure of watching: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. This opening shot will prove to be a perfect microcosm of the movie itself; both incredibly intimidating and foreboding, as well as impossibly epic and full of endless promise, it's a film that is both immediately comprehensible on a gut level, while also cryptic enough with its deeper meanings that it's been endlessly scrutinized and over-analyzed for over half a century now, with still no end of its grip on film scholarship in sight, to the point that I just wrote the entire opening paragraph of this review about just the first few minutes alone without you realizing it, didn't I?


All jokes aside, while it's not easy (and rather pointless) to try accurately describing the plot of 2001 in mere words, I'll make an attempt anyway; beginning at the "Dawn Of Man" (as the opening chapter card helpfully informs us), with a starving tribe of apes who learn how to use tools after the unexplained appearance of a foreboding stone "monolith" in their midst, the film suddenly jumps millions of years into the future, with the just-as-sudden reappearance of the massive, iPhone-shaped square on the Moon, a discovery that leads the men who discovered it (and mankind in turn) on the most epic of cinematic journeys, one that spans the stars, and ultimately, the very limits of human evolution itself. It's a grand story that manages to both be incredibly cryptic with its story and imagery, as well as make perfect sense upon deeper analysis, with Kubrick's screenplay collaborator, Science-Fiction icon Arthur C. Clarke, helps ensure that the story always knows exactly where it's going and what it's saying, a striking clarity that I wish certain other works in the genre would be able to attain (I'm looking at you, Prometheus...)


But like I said, describing the story of 2001 is unnecessary anyway, as the real pleasure of the film is the unparalleled sensory experience it offers on the whole, as, since Kubrick adheres to both a "show, don't tell", visually-based style of storytelling, as well as to a hard scientific accuracy in the film's portrayal of interstellar travel, which often includes a complete lack of sound in the vacuum of space, an aspect that makes these scenes perfect for emphasizing the classical music soundtrack that fits so well, it's hard to believe that it wasn't written specifically for the film itself, as it perfectly enhances the elegant, slow-motion "dances" of the impossibly detailed space stations and ships on display here, all lovingly crafted by Kubrick's design team, and even over half a century later, the practical models and effects of 2001 still look more realistic than most works of Science Fiction that are being produced today.


Of course, some viewers have found the slow, extended sequences of space travel in the film to be fairly dull and uneventful, but I've always appreciated the way that these minutes-long intermissions allow us to just relax and soak in the interminglings of technology with the endless beauty of space, as the film makes us wait on its own, millennias-long timeline that nonetheless still proves to be oddly propulsive in its own, one-of-a-kind way, as it's completely unafraid to take all the time it needs to craft the right mood, lulling us into the proper state of hypnotic viewing, even if you haven't tried enhancing your experience by certain "substances" as you watch, as a number of contemporary hippies are reported to have done during the film's original release (hey, there's a good reason why one of the film's taglines is "The ultimate trip", after all).


At any rate, another aspect that 2001 excels at is the way that it presents a truly full-bodied, three-dimensonal vision of the future, not content to offer a shiny but ultimately vague conceptualization, but one that really tries making informed, educated speculations about what life in the then-future year of 2001 would be like, with the way its portrayal of the commercialization of space travel turns it into being just another everyday errand, with such "mundane" details as the sight of a flight attendent making a disorienting, zero-G walk upside down simply to deliver lunch to a pair of eagerly waiting shuttle pilots.


This subtly, effortlessly ties into 2001's recurring message that, despite all the wondrous sights and technologies that the future of the film has to offer us as viewers, to the characters in the actual film, an experience like flying to a massive space station rotating in the heavens has become so everyday, it can be unintentionally napped through, as humanity has become dull and jaded in the future that none of the human beings in the film exhibit so much as a hint of having an personality, with the most memorable character in the film being the glowing red dot that represents the supercomputer "HAL", with the most emotional scene happening after he's begun to malfunction, as he slowly, helplessly begs (in his unnervingly robotic monotone) to not have his "mind" erased.


Finally, 2001 excels in its absolute refusal to provide any unnecessary, audience-coddling answers to the universe shattering questions that it raises, as, even as advanced as mankind is in the film, it still shows there are certain things that will always be beyond our comprehension as human beings (at least, that is, until we evolve into something greater than that). It's perplexing storytelling that nonetheless knows exactly what to let the audience know (and not know), both showcasing the great fear we would experience upon making first contact with an alien intelligence eons beyond our understanding, with the incredibly eerie, harrowing choirs moaning in the background that accompany almost every sighting of the Monolith, while also ultimately proving to be optimistic about the endless possibilities of such contact. In that way, 2001 still towers over cinema like the Monolith itself over humanity, proving to be the finest example of Kubrick's legendary perfectionism, and watching it for the first time is a lot like experiencing what Dave does when he goes "beyond the infinite" towards the end; you have no idea what exactly what you're experiencing, but you also know that you'll never, ever be the same again.



cuz it's got monkeys in it and Ric Flair's entrance music and a bunch of purdy lights
__________________



cuz it's got monkeys in it and Ric Flair's entrance music and a bunch of purdy lights
That too.






Okay:


WARNING: spoilers below
After a few minutes of orchestral strings making an aimless, dissonant racket, the first thunderous notes of "Thus Spake Zarathrustra" begin to play, as we're greeted with a sudden close-up of the moon, before it's superseded by the sight of a newborn Sun cresting over the Earth, the two heavenly spheres uniting in the most perfect of alignments, and, as the musical piece booms towards its climax, a title card announces the name of the film we're about to have the pleasure of watching: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. This opening shot will prove to be a perfect microcosm of the movie itself; both incredibly intimidating and foreboding, as well as impossibly epic and full of endless promise, it's a film that is both immediately comprehensible on a gut level, while also cryptic enough with its deeper meanings that it's been endlessly scrutinized and over-analyzed for over half a century now, with still no end of its grip on film scholarship in sight, to the point that I just wrote the entire opening paragraph of this review about just the first few minutes alone without you realizing it, didn't I?


All jokes aside, while it's not easy (and rather pointless) to try accurately describing the plot of 2001 in mere words, I'll make an attempt anyway; beginning at the "Dawn Of Man" (as the opening chapter card helpfully informs us), with a starving tribe of apes who learn how to use tools after the unexplained appearance of a foreboding stone "monolith" in their midst, the film suddenly jumps millions of years into the future, with the just-as-sudden reappearance of the massive, iPhone-shaped square on the Moon, a discovery that leads the men who discovered it (and mankind in turn) on the most epic of cinematic journeys, one that spans the stars, and ultimately, the very limits of human evolution itself. It's a grand story that manages to both be incredibly cryptic with its story and imagery, as well as make perfect sense upon deeper analysis, with Kubrick's screenplay collaborator, Science-Fiction icon Arthur C. Clarke, helps ensure that the story always knows exactly where it's going and what it's saying, a striking clarity that I wish certain other works in the genre would be able to attain (I'm looking at you, Prometheus...)


But like I said, describing the story of 2001 is unnecessary anyway, as the real pleasure of the film is the unparalleled sensory experience it offers on the whole, as, since Kubrick adheres to both a "show, don't tell", visually-based style of storytelling, as well as to a hard scientific accuracy in the film's portrayal of interstellar travel, which often includes a complete lack of sound in the vacuum of space, an aspect that makes these scenes perfect for emphasizing the classical music soundtrack that fits so well, it's hard to believe that it wasn't written specifically for the film itself, as it perfectly enhances the elegant, slow-motion "dances" of the impossibly detailed space stations and ships on display here, all lovingly crafted by Kubrick's design team, and even over half a century later, the practical models and effects of 2001 still look more realistic than most works of Science Fiction that are being produced today.


Of course, some viewers have found the slow, extended sequences of space travel in the film to be fairly dull and uneventful, but I've always appreciated the way that these minutes-long intermissions allow us to just relax and soak in the interminglings of technology with the endless beauty of space, as the film makes us wait on its own, millennias-long timeline that nonetheless still proves to be oddly propulsive in its own, one-of-a-kind way, as it's completely unafraid to take all the time it needs to craft the right mood, lulling us into the proper state of hypnotic viewing, even if you haven't tried enhancing your experience by certain "substances" as you watch, as a number of contemporary hippies are reported to have done during the film's original release (hey, there's a good reason why one of the film's taglines is "The ultimate trip", after all).


At any rate, another aspect that 2001 excels at is the way that it presents a truly full-bodied, three-dimensonal vision of the future, not content to offer a shiny but ultimately vague conceptualization, but one that really tries making informed, educated speculations about what life in the then-future year of 2001 would be like, with the way its portrayal of the commercialization of space travel turns it into being just another everyday errand, with such "mundane" details as the sight of a flight attendent making a disorienting, zero-G walk upside down simply to deliver lunch to a pair of eagerly waiting shuttle pilots.


This subtly, effortlessly ties into 2001's recurring message that, despite all the wondrous sights and technologies that the future of the film has to offer us as viewers, to the characters in the actual film, an experience like flying to a massive space station rotating in the heavens has become so everyday, it can be unintentionally napped through, as humanity has become dull and jaded in the future that none of the human beings in the film exhibit so much as a hint of having an personality, with the most memorable character in the film being the glowing red dot that represents the supercomputer "HAL", with the most emotional scene happening after he's begun to malfunction, as he slowly, helplessly begs (in his unnervingly robotic monotone) to not have his "mind" erased.


Finally, 2001 excels in its absolute refusal to provide any unnecessary, audience-coddling answers to the universe shattering questions that it raises, as, even as advanced as mankind is in the film, it still shows there are certain things that will always be beyond our comprehension as human beings (at least, that is, until we evolve into something greater than that). It's perplexing storytelling that nonetheless knows exactly what to let the audience know (and not know), both showcasing the great fear we would experience upon making first contact with an alien intelligence eons beyond our understanding, with the incredibly eerie, harrowing choirs moaning in the background that accompany almost every sighting of the Monolith, while also ultimately proving to be optimistic about the endless possibilities of such contact. In that way, 2001 still towers over cinema like the Monolith itself over humanity, proving to be the finest example of Kubrick's legendary perfectionism, and watching it for the first time is a lot like experiencing what Dave does when he goes "beyond the infinite" towards the end; you have no idea what exactly what you're experiencing, but you also know that you'll never, ever be the same again.



First paragraph: no, you gave me that Marcel Proust feel pretty quickly. The keyword you used was "over-analyzed." I've read Swann's Way before.


Second paragraph: it's obvious that the monoliths influence the people around them. I theorize the monolith itself is responsible for the invention of HAL.


Third paragraph: while the classical music is perfectly fitting, I'm under the impression that the greatest film ever would likely have its own music. It's not a law, but a movie's score is its own score. This differs from "adapting a musical" or a "remake" or even Fantasia.


Fourth paragraph: I love that about 2001, but to be fair, it was still dragged on. When it comes to the visuals, once they start doing the same thing over and over again, it loses its touch. This is unlike Satantango where slow scenes sometimes revolved around human expressions and human interaction.


Fifth paragraph: the special effects were at least two decades ahead of its time, and I always loved that about the film.


Sixth paragraph: and I respect that. It's a wonderful thing to add to a movie that I think borders on "experimental" or "arthouse." But if we're just supposed to treat 2001 as a new age album in the end, where does the personal connection come in? A message about humanity should be a bit more personal than what 2001 offered. Although I do appreciate the subtlety the same way I appreciate it in the Sade album Love Deluxe. Less is more.


Seventh paragraph: I love crypticism very much. I just feel that it was overdone in 2001. I mean, we could have still been given reasons to love Dave as a human being. I repeat: a message of humanity should have more reason to be relatable. I wanted to relate to Dave and see how his personal experiences with the universe around him affected him on a deeper scale.


Otherwise the film's perfect. It just needs to BE human.