Cred Confessions: 2001

My credibility confessions continue with my screening of 2001 last night. When I say screening it means I watched it on Blu-Ray with my three buddies who have seen at least 10 times each. When I asked if they wanted to watch, one of my friends simply referred to it as "The Masterpiece." And I gotta say, this movie really took my mind, blasted into outer space, than grilled it in a english muffin pizza with extra mozzarella. I'm not sure I have truly recovered.

Now I will say, I did see this film with my Dad when I was really little and I remember thinking "where the hell are the aliens?" Now that I'm older, wiser, and more informed about the nature of space, time, and extra-terrestrials I found myself mesmerized by it. Every camera movement in this film feels revolutionary and every shot feels like a space painting. Any other statement I make about how technically amazing this film is, both now and when it came out, just makes me sound like a rookie.

However what struck me about about it was the overall message about the relationship between men and machines. As we progress further into the future, our dependency on our machines (Droids, Iphones, Ipads, TVs, space-ships) all seem to be developing to a point that is reflected accurately in the film (the year is a little off, but who cares). However it seems that in the film that technology eventually leads us to understanding what it means to be human, and I'm not sure that is the case today. Facebook, twitter, four square, and everything else seems to connect us to each other even more, but at the same time it limits our face to face interaction. So are the machines making us or more less human? I guess we'll have to wait for the monolith to answer that!