A Space Odyssey

Best movies of all time

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Movies

Science fiction

The greatest film ever made began with the meeting of two brilliant minds: Stanley Kubrick and sci-fi seer Arthur C Clarke. ‘I understand he’s a nut who lives in a tree in India somewhere,’ noted Kubrick when Clarke’s name came up – along with those of Isaac Asimov, Robert A Heinlein and Ray Bradbury – as a possible writer for his planned sci-fi epic. Clarke was actually living in Ceylon (not in India, or a tree), but the pair met, hit it off, and forged a story of technological progress and disaster (hello, HAL) that’s steeped in humanity, in all its brilliance, weakness, courage and mad ambition. An audience of stoners, wowed by its eye-candy Star Gate sequence and pioneering visuals, adopted it as a pet movie. Were it not for them, 2001 might have faded into obscurity, but it’s hard to imagine it would have stayed there. Kubrick’s frighteningly clinical vision of the future – AI and all – still feels prophetic, more than 50 years on.—Phil de Semlyen 

 Both ‘Interstellar’ and ‘Gravity’ took us out of this world, but the reputation of Stanley Kubrick’s classic – now re-released – is safe. It’s not that ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ doesn’t look dated – it does, a bit – but it remains as intelligent and provocative as ever, bearing years of conceptual dreaming. Until today’s equivalent of novelist Arthur C Clarke commits a hefty chunk of time to envisioning the beginning of human civilisation, as well as the far future, there will be no new film to supplant it.

Though it was showered with praise for its technical achievements, ‘2001’ lingers more potently in the mind as a tall, black riddle: where are the new bones, the new tools, that will take us higher? Douglas Rain’s clammy voice work as Hal 9000, the murderous machine, remains one of Kubrick’s snazziest pieces of direction.

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