2001: A Space Odyssey Review: An Oddity

I’m very confused. I don’t know if I loved it or hated it. You can tell a lot of work and creativity went into it. But the story is almost non-existent. It’s very experimental. I should point out that I watched this on my TV. Watching it in a theater is probably amazing but I wouldn’t know from experience. I just don’t know how to feel. The last 15 minutes are literally just colors swirling around with this ear bleeding noise. All the characters have no personality. But the ships and technology are SO ahead of its time. I just wish there was more plot. I’ll probably need to rewatch this like 5 times to get a true understanding of what I just watched. Kubrick definitely is a genius in terms of cinematography but for me cinematography can’t fully carry a movie. The first 10 minutes are just monkeys fighting each other. I feel like the beginning and ending were just tacked on. Kubrick may have had an exact idea of what each scene meant but as the viewer I didn’t. I was confused. Part of me thinks that’s a way to convey the mysterious nature of space. Another part of me thinks it’s ambiguous just to be ambiguous. I’m just left here scratching my head wondering what I just watched. This movie is critically acclaimed and I don’t fully understand it. On Letterboxd it is the 40th highest rated movie. I really don’t understand this movie or why people love it so much. I need to read about it, rewatch it and come to a full conclusion. One thing I can say with full confidence is that the score is absolutely brilliant. It has such a grandiose feel to it. I do respect the fact that this movie’s visuals are extremely ahead of its time. I’ve seen movies that came out in 2019 that didn't look nearly as good as this. This movie was released in 1968. But even still looks aren’t everything. As an example Interstellar is another long, dense science fiction movie. Even though that movie has so much ground to cover it still gives a lot of character development and elaborate plot. Interstellar is an hour longer than 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I don’t expect them to have the exact same amount of character growth and plot but two hours and twenty five minutes is still a long amount of time and absolutely enough to fit some semblance of character growth. For now I can’t rate this movie because I’m so on the fence.