The DU Lounge

It is the best movie made that year, way better than the movie that won Best Picture that year, but it didn't even get nominated for that honor. It is one of the very few science fiction movies that does the no-sounds-in-outer-space thing right. One criticism I have heard is that all of that stuff that happens at the end is bewildering, confusing, incomprehensible, but I think that's the point of it. The idea is that we humans were encountering a much older, vastly more advanced intelligence, so much so that they were incomprehensible to us. How well do dogs and cats understand us? Probably much better than we would understand an alien intelligence as godlike as the ones in that film. During that montage of images at the end when David Bowman is being given the quick tour of the universe, the momentary glimpses of his face show a man whose mind is being seriously and completely blown. A great movie, one of the best science fiction films ever.

-- Ron