“The film creates its effects essentially out of visuals and music. It is meditative. It does not cater to us, but wants to inspire us, enlarge us.”
Following on from Stanley Kramer’s 1960 courtroom drama Inherit the Wind in defence of Darwin’s theory of evolution, here’s Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic in which the theory of evolution is very much a still-going-on concern.
Kubrick’s epic begins at the Dawn of Man - where a mysterious monolith imparts deadly-but-essential evolutionary knowledge to a bunch of apes - before making a great leap forward to the year 2001 AD where another (?) monolith has been discovered buried on the Moon - setting in motion a manned-mission to Jupiter (and beyond!).
It’s not hyperbole to claim that 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most influential films ever made. But how does it stand up today? Watch a true-believer (Wayne) and an agnostic (Nigel) discuss the film below…
We’d love to hear what you think of the film once you’ve seen it. Leave a comment here, send us an email, Tweet us @tpfilmclub or post on our Facebook page.
Where can you watch 2001: A Space Odyssey?
You can rent the film from Amazon, Apple, Sky Store and the BFI Player.
Related links
The Ultimate Trip (Archive on 4)
Great Radio 4 programme about the film presented by Christopher Frayling and produced by our friend Jane Long
On The Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001
Documentary from 2013
2001 article archive
Many pieces about the film, including Pauline Kael’s infamous takedown
