Film is one of the most thought-provoking forms of art that this generation has available. It spans from a gargantuan screen in a theater to your small cellphone screen at home. Directors, writers, and actors can portray their ideas and emotions across all platforms. In this blog, I will be reviewing several films in the AFI (American Film Institute’s) top 100 and then voicing my opinion on the film and stating whether the film deserves the praise it received. I will also be discussing the social impact and deeper meanings the film contained. The first film I will be analyzing is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This film comes in at 13 on AFI’s top 100, which makes it criminally underrated. This film spoke to me as a child because it requires a second watch! 

With the number of concepts broached throughout this film, you have to give this work of art a second watch; to fully grasp Kubrick’s purpose in creating this masterpiece. 

This film raised many questions, including the impact of extraterrestrial beings on human development. At the beginning of the film, hominids struggle for success until they reach a monolith and learn how to make tools to create weapons to kill animals, which in turn causes their brains to undergo growth. 

Stanley Kubrick seems to believe that the only plausible way for hominids to undergo evolution was for extraterrestrials to intervene using a monolith, gifting the hominids with supernatural knowledge of tools.

The film then leaps forward to humans using their newfound tools, a spacecraft, exploring space to seek even more knowledge. Then enters a new battle, not only man versus his hostile environment like our hominid ancestors, but now we have created machines to compete with us. 

The main character, an astronaut, named Dave, battles the spacecraft’s AI, HAL 9000, and becomes victorious. Afterward, he enters this colorful fervent trance in which he speaks to himself at various ages. 

Kubrick explains this scene by stating, “In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman…and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man’s evolutionary destiny.”

The storyline paired with the daunting soundtrack of the film makes it one of the greatest films of all time. The purpose of this film is to create a link between the human emotions of curiosity and fear. 

Where there is curiosity, there will always be fear. Stanley Kubrik creates the perfect balance between the two emotions: fear and curiosity.

The two emotions that go hand in hand as we endeavor into the next frontier: space.