Returning after many years, I can figure out better what's going on. The mysterious monolith inspires awe, the rarity of it's appearance, the change that the world undergoes between the time man's ancestor invents his first tool, to it's logical evolution up to space travel. The bone triumphantly hurled at the sky flashes forward by millions or so years into a space ship. The film may be formatted like an extremely slow dance, but it is riveting to watch, specially after HAL, the most human of the characters, starts to express himself. There is tension, suspense and surprises. The film is a feat of the imagination and vision going far beyond the usual SF. It has more than a touch of the mystic, the transcendental. "There are more things in heaven.....". To paraphrase the words of Ebert, it is a film about man's position in universal space and time, and awe is what it inspires.
OLD REVIEW
OLD REVIEW
2 comments:
I was baffled when I watched it in 1996, but now it becomes my favorite film. It's slow indeed, but I willingly let myself immersed in its mood whenever I revisit it, and I always get the same awe and wonder about the vast space above us.
As much as space its about the vastness of time and something that goes beyond either.....
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