varun_iitian
Lifetime Total
1+
IMDb Member
19 years
Reviews
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
An example of excellence
As the movie, one becomes short of words in its praise after watching it. Arguably the best movie ever made in Hollywood history, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a viewer's and a director's movie. No actors come in between the two except for the inhuman HAL, the supercomputer. That the movie sets mark for defining excellence is not a preposterous statement.
The movie speaks of journeys in many ways. Be it the journey of 5 humans in a modern spaceship from Earth to Jupiter, or the journey of William Sylvester to the moon through the international space station. But the main journey shown is the journey of the mankind, from living a nomadic life to gaining intelligence and becoming a higher form of life to gaining super intelligence. Is this journey controlled or carefully planned by an external source? Kubrick tries to tell you the answer by taking you through the journey, you experience every bit of it. Through minimal use of dialogues, the director has been able to project the experience.
The movie starts with no life at all. Even the shots are not moving scenes but still images that signify the lack of movement. The first signs of movement are of some animals and then nomadic humans in a corner of the frame. Here, through a fight for survival and under the force of an extra ordinary object, human life gains intelligence. This power grows until humans are able to build computers that can simulate every emotion of the human being. Thus, enters HAL 9000. Interestingly, if all the three letters of HAL are shifted by one on the right in the English alphabet, we get IBM, a leading computer manufacturing firm of the time when the movie was made. HAL may as well stand for Heuristic and ALgorithmic approaches in Artificial Intelligence.
The journey in the movie is always given a direction by some external force and when Kier Dullea goes to find it, he is pulled to some corner of the universe ultimately resulting in the birth of a new super intelligent form. In a way, the journey completes a whole cycle.
The beauty of the movie lies in the accurate depiction of modern technology. For someone to show the International Space Station in 1968 exactly as it hangs today is miraculous. The generation of artificial gravity through rotation shows the scientific correctness of the various scenes. The imagery to show the astronaut's transition in the end is superb as is the same at the time when his space ship is pulled to some unknown realms of the universe.
I would strongly recommend this movie to everyone who has a bit of taste for science or pure cinematic art. Watching the movie may, however, require a lot of patience as it may feel to be too slow (nearly static) as many times.
The movie speaks of journeys in many ways. Be it the journey of 5 humans in a modern spaceship from Earth to Jupiter, or the journey of William Sylvester to the moon through the international space station. But the main journey shown is the journey of the mankind, from living a nomadic life to gaining intelligence and becoming a higher form of life to gaining super intelligence. Is this journey controlled or carefully planned by an external source? Kubrick tries to tell you the answer by taking you through the journey, you experience every bit of it. Through minimal use of dialogues, the director has been able to project the experience.
The movie starts with no life at all. Even the shots are not moving scenes but still images that signify the lack of movement. The first signs of movement are of some animals and then nomadic humans in a corner of the frame. Here, through a fight for survival and under the force of an extra ordinary object, human life gains intelligence. This power grows until humans are able to build computers that can simulate every emotion of the human being. Thus, enters HAL 9000. Interestingly, if all the three letters of HAL are shifted by one on the right in the English alphabet, we get IBM, a leading computer manufacturing firm of the time when the movie was made. HAL may as well stand for Heuristic and ALgorithmic approaches in Artificial Intelligence.
The journey in the movie is always given a direction by some external force and when Kier Dullea goes to find it, he is pulled to some corner of the universe ultimately resulting in the birth of a new super intelligent form. In a way, the journey completes a whole cycle.
The beauty of the movie lies in the accurate depiction of modern technology. For someone to show the International Space Station in 1968 exactly as it hangs today is miraculous. The generation of artificial gravity through rotation shows the scientific correctness of the various scenes. The imagery to show the astronaut's transition in the end is superb as is the same at the time when his space ship is pulled to some unknown realms of the universe.
I would strongly recommend this movie to everyone who has a bit of taste for science or pure cinematic art. Watching the movie may, however, require a lot of patience as it may feel to be too slow (nearly static) as many times.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Great Piece of Art
I would say that the movie is really a gem of an art piece. The use of excellent imagery coupled with pretty out-of-the-place background score tells us about the uniqueness of this movie. Stanley Kubrick has really applied a lot of thought into this.
The director wants the audience to feel something as bad not because he is showing it as bad but because it really is bad. The background music accompanying the ultra violent scenes is comical, and not dramatic or anything else that is commonly associated with such scenes. This gives the viewer an opportunity to feel the bitterness not because the music hints so but because he himself feels so. Viewer's emotions should arise irrespective of what the director is trying to show, and this is one of the greatest successes of the movie.
Another glorifying feature is the central idea of the movie. If a human is striped of the choice to choose from good and evil, he no longer remains a human, he becomes a clockwork. When Alex is brain-washed and "programmed" to choose only good, he wasn't accepted by the society and this shows the irony in the objectives of the British Government. The word Orange from the title presumably comes from the word "Ourange" that loosely means man. And hence the title is so appropriate to the movie.
The artificiality in dialogues and sets give the movie a unique feature and enhance the grip on it. This also means that the viewer has to get more involved. This is definitely one of the best technically shot movies, another masterpiece of Kubrick like the Space Oddessey.
For the uninitiated, set in near future Britain, the movie shows Malcom MacDowell as the head of a group of youngsters involved in sexual violence. Turn of the events leave the protagonist in the hands of the police. Worried by the growing number of prisoners the British Government devises a method of "programming" them so that they always choose the good. Alex is chosen as one of those on which the new system is to be tested. The rest unfolds as a saga of the very human characteristic.
Lastly, I would like to say that you may be compelled to leave the movie in between, but if you are watching it for art and cinematic experience, I recommend you to sit through.
The director wants the audience to feel something as bad not because he is showing it as bad but because it really is bad. The background music accompanying the ultra violent scenes is comical, and not dramatic or anything else that is commonly associated with such scenes. This gives the viewer an opportunity to feel the bitterness not because the music hints so but because he himself feels so. Viewer's emotions should arise irrespective of what the director is trying to show, and this is one of the greatest successes of the movie.
Another glorifying feature is the central idea of the movie. If a human is striped of the choice to choose from good and evil, he no longer remains a human, he becomes a clockwork. When Alex is brain-washed and "programmed" to choose only good, he wasn't accepted by the society and this shows the irony in the objectives of the British Government. The word Orange from the title presumably comes from the word "Ourange" that loosely means man. And hence the title is so appropriate to the movie.
The artificiality in dialogues and sets give the movie a unique feature and enhance the grip on it. This also means that the viewer has to get more involved. This is definitely one of the best technically shot movies, another masterpiece of Kubrick like the Space Oddessey.
For the uninitiated, set in near future Britain, the movie shows Malcom MacDowell as the head of a group of youngsters involved in sexual violence. Turn of the events leave the protagonist in the hands of the police. Worried by the growing number of prisoners the British Government devises a method of "programming" them so that they always choose the good. Alex is chosen as one of those on which the new system is to be tested. The rest unfolds as a saga of the very human characteristic.
Lastly, I would like to say that you may be compelled to leave the movie in between, but if you are watching it for art and cinematic experience, I recommend you to sit through.