2001: A Space Odyssey

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Cast & Crew

Keir Dullea

Dr. Dave Bowman

Gary Lockwood

Dr. Frank Poole

William Sylvester

Dr. Heywood R. Floyd

Daniel Richter

Moonwatcher

Leonard Rossiter

Dr. Andrei Smyslov

Douglas Rain

HAL 9000 Voice

Margaret Tyzack

Elena

Robert Beatty

Dr. Ralph Halvorsen

Stanley Kubrick

Director

Arthur C. Clarke

Writer

Stanley Kubrick

Writer

Stanley Kubrick

Producer

Geoffrey Unsworth

Cinematographer

Ray Lovejoy

Film Editing

James Liggat

Casting

Ernest Archer

Production Design

Harry Lange

Production Design

Anthony Masters

Production Design

John Hoesli

Art Director

Robert Cartwright

Set Decoration

Hardy Amies

Costume Design

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Critic Reviews for 2001: A Space Odyssey

Audience Reviews for 2001: A Space Odyssey

• May 02, 2016

  A masterpiece in its own right, 2001 is a sharp, cinematic film that drags itself out and fails to stay engaging for the duration.
  

  Super Reviewer
• Apr 10, 2016

  It's always hard to achieve something. To capture people. To entertain people. But Stanley Kubrick always managed to do that with his movies and having now watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" a couple of times, I can officially say that I understand what Kubrick did with this movie. Do I like it? Oh, yes. This is an amazing movie. You are constantly wondering about what's happening on the screen and your mind is constantly working at full speed. You are taken through many different decades and for every decade we go through, we achieve a little more knowledge about how our species are evolving. This is by far the most technically advanced movie that Kubrick has ever made - and even though he also made great movies like "Full Metal Jacket" and "Dr. Strangelove" - this movie also has the best plot of all them if you are able to see through the very trippy aspects of this masterpiece. You just need to believe that you can understand this movie, and then in the end: you will...
  

  Super Reviewer
• Feb 04, 2016

  Over two hours; tons of groundbreaking visual effects; a psychedelic stargate sequence; and interiors that look like something out of almost every film it's influenced. Now here's why I'm such a fan of it. 2001: A Space Odyssey came out a whopping 14 months before Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins won the space race for the United States via Apollo 11. It was a film that was made roughly over the course of a tenuous three years in which Stanley Kubrick proved himself one of the 1960s most quintessential directors with this film alone (yes, I'm aware of Spartacus, Lolita, and Dr. Strangelove but i'm talking on a reputation level). 2001 isn't as much of a film as it is a visual symphony which explores the ideas of the interstellar at a time when the world's interest in space was at an all-time high due to the all-mythical space race nearing it's last sprint. I believe it would be outright mentally deranged to say that the world's enthusiasm for outer space at the tail-end of the '60s didn't help this film's reception at all, but I also think that Odyssey was such a success because for all it's hype and praise it's gotten over the years, it really IS as good as many people say. Over the two and a half hour runtime, we see Kubrick's direction in full bloom, first via the surprisingly abstract prehistorical sequence involving tribes of man-apes fighting over a water hole, and then through the following three clusters of the film; the Moon journey, the Jupiter mission, and finally Beyond Jupiter where we see the enigmatic ending which has been discussed and dissected over and over again in the pantheon of pop culture (I myself subscribing to the film being a giant painting of evolutionary theory, but that's not the point, here). Two and a half hours where viewers across the world were introduced to elaborate space sequences, clinically futuristic sets, and visual effects which went beyond matte paintings and using backgrounds to simulate car chases. And that's exactly why this film is so hallowed, it was the first motion picture to do so many things that others had either shied away from, or didn't have the technology or the vision to do, but perhaps most importantly Kubrick paints a realistic picture of space both with dozens of minute-spanning shots, and the lack of sound during most of the shots excluding the film's score which emphasize the isolation, loneliness and barren terrain of outer space. All of these accomplishments help the film pioneer a path that would continue being forged and widened in the coming decades with dozens of other films carrying on in it's footsteps (*cough cough Star Wars, anyone). The two other elements which particularly come to mind that cause it to stand out as a masterpiece are the production design and acting. The design of the film in retrospect fits perfectly with the cinematography and compliments it further with sparsely-decorated sets which paint space in a picture that no film until Star Wars has. The Discovery One and the other space shuttles and stations all share these qualities which paint the future in a very cool, calculated, and machine-centric way, which all of science fiction has seemingly taken after since. However, in terms of the film's acting, I have a polarized view. For such a grandiose film, the acting is quite remarkably unremarkable. Part of this is because of the monstrous amount of dialogue Kubrick decided to drop from the script and also because the story itself relies on the image before the substance to a large degree and therefore William Sylvester, Keir Dullea, and Gary Lockwood are relegated nearly to fixtures of the film itself, not because they are particularly lousy at acting, but because they had so little to work with in terms of dialogue. And the irony of this is that it melds perfectly with Stephen King's observation that Kubrick ultimately was not without fault and that he "thought too much and felt too little." The final beauty of 2001 is that it's a film that leaves much open to the imagination of the viewer. Why did HAL suffer such a malfunction? What is the monolith? What's the significance of the stargate sequence? Is the fetus child indeed Bowman and if so what is it's purpose? You can come to your own conclusions but the bottom line is that this film is as true of a masterpiece as many say it is.
  

  Super Reviewer
• Sep 26, 2015

  Some movies get acclaim in their time, but then years later they do not seem so great. For the first hour while rewatching 2001, particularly the moon base sequences, I was wondering if this is really an all-time great movie. But after the mission to Jupiter begins, the show starts and it does not feel dated. If anything, it gets better on repeat viewings, with more to pick up. 2001 is full of exemplary pioneering spirit and does deserve to be called one of the all-time greats.
  

  Super Reviewer