Review of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Watched last Aug 24, 2017

Jill Tiutan
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read

Lately I’ve been getting more serious about film, and it’s been a silent struggle for me to try to figure out exactly what a good film is made of.

Firstly, I’ve heard a lot of good (groundbreaking) and bad (utterly boring) things about 2001, so I was naturally curious as to which end of the spectrum I’d be part of.

Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Warner Bros., 1968. IMDb.

More than anything, 2001 is/was eye opening (don’t even get me started on the cinematography). In some ways, I could be thinking this way because I’ve been accustomed to watching stereotypical 2000s blockbuster movies growing up (especially those wherein the cuts are quick and the close-up shots are overused). But in many ways, I think it’s because of Kubrick’s genius artistry itself– his penchant for inducing his audience’s involvement through ambiguity.

Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Warner Bros., 1968. IMDb.

Designers and technical artists are tasked to create things that are intuitive in order to allow people to use products properly. In the same way, storytellers are encouraged to lead their viewers with cues to understand or at least infer where the story is going at any given point in time.

Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Warner Bros., 1968. IMDb.

It seems that Kubrick did the opposite. He didn’t design the story by dropping hints, jump scares, and the like. He gave his audience participation in the story. For example, by choosing to use either white noise or classical music to fill highly impactful scenes, and purposely rejecting heavy symphonies that gave away too many story cues, Kubrick gave us, the audience, time to breathe, to think, to interpret.

And that’s where his artistry comes in– when the audience has the leeway to derive their own thoughts on the scene and situation, they’re transformed into active participants of the story. Kubrick allows people to care about his characters– to be attached to them and to be engaged in their journey–because much like what happens in real life, no one knows what happens next in the story. At that point, anything becomes possible, and the only way to find out is to follow the character/s closely (as with the film’s natural-esque stream of time) and root for their success as the story moves along.

I’ll save writing a full review for when I see this film a second time. Right now, I just want to absorb everything I’ve seen and bask in the fact that the film has changed me in some way.


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Jill Tiutan

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i write about product design, film and the world around me

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