Stanley Kubrick shows he is a photographer first and foremost. He shows you amazing scenes throughout the movie. The audience sees the desert landscape with all its harsh drab hues. But Kubrick also shows the deserts beauty at sunset. Later Kubrick shows the breathtaking views of outer space.

Kubrick proves he has mastered art direction in the movie. 2001 uses a fish eye lens to make the audience see through the red glaring eye of H.A.L., the spaceship’s supercomputer. He makes an actress look as if she was walking up a wall and on the ceiling with a rotating room and fixed camera.

Great effect with different tricks, Kubrick films objects floating in the air to make zero gravity in space more plausible. Films astronaut running inside a cylindrical space ship with a moving camera. That shot is revolutionary. These scenes are a joy to watch because Kubrick filmed before computer animation was even a dream. He was forced to be creative to capture these images.

The soundtrack is bittersweet. The film uses classical music pieces during pivotal plot points. Some of these pieces work well. 2001 was the defining movie to use Johann Strauss “The Blue Danube” to describe beauty and perfection. It was also the movie to associate Richard Strauss “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” with epiphanies. However, some of the pieces involve a choir chanting. This music is not as pleasing to the ear. The sound is unsettling and is used to foreshadow darker moment to come. But the music misses the target and is only annoying.

The movie used the overbearing breathing sound in excess. Suddenly, the loud sound stops, leaving the audience in silence during a character’s death. This is a great effect and a good example of thinking outside the box.

Beyond the images and sound, it is easy to get lost toward the end of the movie. Some of the images at the end of the movie look more a like a drunk film student exploring the negative imaging on the camera. But Kubrick was trying his best to express some complicated thoughts the original novel could easily explain with narrative. Kubrick was doing his best showing, not telling, the audience the story. Unfortunately, those ideas are a little too illusive, even for Kubrick.

If you are able to sit through a lot of that stuff called plot, 2001 is a great movie. If gives power behind the paranoid fear of what the future holds for evolution and artificial intelligence. 2001 deserves its spot on the American Film Institutes Top 100 Films.