2001: A Space Odyssey

It is sometimes as important to be in touch with the truths of your own time as it is to be in touch with its metaphors. 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the most influential films ever made, constructed a haunting metaphor for the modern era, dealing with the metamorphosis of man into a higher form of existence. Like any powerful metaphor, 2001 works on many levels simultaneously, and it has influenced not only films but also our collective imaginations through special effects, sound and music, a technorganic character named HAL, and the creation of some of the most evocative images of our times.

One of the most enigmatic great films ever made, 2001 brought together two of the most fertile and original minds ever to have collaborated on a work of fiction, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick. Not long after World War II, Clarke came up with an idea that revolutionised modern communications: geo-synchronous satellites that could be used to send signals from one place on earth to another. Clarke started his prolific science fiction career in 1938 with “Man’s Empire of Tomorrow” and continues to the present, including two sequels to 2001, 2010: Odyssey Two, and 2063: Odyssey Three.

Kubrick, widely regarded as one of the greatest of post-World War II American filmmakers, started his career as a still photographer. He came to 2001 fresh from two controversial successes, an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s scandalous novel, Lolita, and Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which dealt with a serious subject—the threat of nuclear war—as a black comedy. In contrast to Clarke’s large body of work, Kubrick’s limited output results from painstaking perfectionism, of which 2001 is perhaps the most imaginative and poetic expression. - Criterion