The Best Film of all Time?

 by Florence Yearsley

Nineteen-sixty-eight was a significant year in many ways. There were riots across France, and the United Kingdom and the United States had their own existential crisis. Many Americans thought the country was having a nervous breakdown, and this toxic atmosphere manifested in the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

The Olympics held in Mexico that year was also noteworthy. Bob Beamon's world record long jump stood for 23 years; Dick Fosbury invented his famous high-jump 'flop', and at the victory ceremony for the men's 200-metres, Tommy Smith (Gold) and John Carlos (Bronze) stood with head bowed and a black-gloved fist raised during the US national anthem. 

Also that year, on April 3rd at a small theatre in New York, 1500 film stars and bigwigs with assorted critics were at the world premiere of what I'd argue is the best film of all time: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It bombed. A third of the audience walked out before the end, some were booing, and the rest were talking. The reviews could not have been worse. One read: 'A whimsical space operetta, then frantically inflates itself again for a surreal climax in which the imagery is obscure enough to be annoying, just precise enough to be banal.'

So why is 2001: A Space Odyssey the best film of all time? Kubrick wanted this to be called Man's Relation to the Universe, which he shows us. This film assaults our senses with sound and vision. Rather than spoon-feeding his audience, he hints at what is there and leaves us to interpret the meaning. His example is, what if Da Vinci had written on the back of the Mona Lisa, 'she smiles like that because she has bad teeth'. 

Kubrick wanted to convey in his film his belief that 'most astronomers and other scientists say the universe is crawling with life, much of it since the numbers are so staggering.' So, it's a film of man's evolution from ape to the Nietzschean 'Ubermensch' with the help of an unseen extra-terrestrial force.

It's a staggering philosophical tour-de-force that demands a second viewing immediately after completing the first. If not for the incredible non-CGI effects but for the dizzying accompanying music by Ligeti, Strauss and Khachaturian. The film slips hypnagogically into your psyche and dances in your subconscious until further meanings reveal themselves. 

Arguably, all great art is subjective because one viewer can see things differently than another. Botticelli's Primavera is either an ancient scene of simple classical figures or one of the most beautiful paintings of all time. A gateway into the mind of one of the early Renaissance masters who used his magical brushes to show us the nonpareil beauty of Venus, the feminine virtues of the Three Graces and the coming of Spring through Flora.

It's all about perspective and understanding. 

The film world did take notice of 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Sight and Sound voted it the best film of all time in the 2022 directors' poll. Cinematic luminaries such as George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron and Ridley Scott named Kubrick's masterpiece a considerable influence. 

2001: A Space Odyssey was (and is still) way ahead of its time. It's an experience, not just a film.