Random ramblings..

Well watched 2001-A Space Odyssey yesterday. Space has always fascinated me and I simply loved my trips to the planetoriums at childhood, so I thought this movie would be an enjoyable experience. The movie begins by showing some splendid photographs of the sunrise and the sunset. The next thing that we see are animals looking like something between apes and humans together with pigs eat some green plants. The kind of eveolution that is shown is undoubtdley good..I mean how one tribe of apes master the art of using bones of other animals for hunting and fighting. Then all of a sudden a black monolith appears and the next thing you see is, man has moved on to outer space. And then follows the discovery of a similar black monolith in the moon. Somehow I feel for someone who is watching the movie for the first time, this is the point where we get lost. It is difficult to understand the significance of the appearance (or rather the discovery) of the black monolith on the moon and then the travel of another lot of astronauts to Jupiter. The concept of a super computer HAL 9000 going faulty and its being able to destroy the lives of all but one astronaut, again raises the same cliched question of how far machines can be trusted..The movie ends with the appearance of the black monolith again on the jupiter and the transformation of the alive astronaut into a baby still in the womb but capapble of viewing the universe at its entirety does confound the viewers. The movie does become slow at times and I shall be a big cine hypocrite if I do not admit that I did got bored at times because of the pace of the movie. But yes I feel that these kind of movies cannot be enjoyed at the first time. Probably if I watch it again or even as I ponder and try to think about the movie, I can atleast connect the parts of the movie. In the end not such a bad experience over all..even though it could not give me the kind of thrill a planetorium experience does!!