2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Apart from my inability to follow the overarching plot, 2001: A Space Odyssey is supposed to be one of the top ten films of all time. I personally think that Stanley Kubrick was in an altered state of consciousness when he was writing and directing this film because it's so bizarre. Unlike many films of today, it had extremely little dialogue, which contributed to the difficulty I had in following it, and its soundtrack featured classical music (like Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and Johann Strauss II's "Blue Danube Waltz"), both of which made it totally unique. After reading up on the film on Wikipedia so I actually knew what was going on, the movie made a lot more sense. It is an epic spanning millions of years and the images of other worlds are spectacular. The parts that did have dialogue, parts II and III, were very interesting and compelling.
The film focuses on how humans have evolved over time. In all four parts of the film, a black monolith appears, inspiring human evolution and creativity. It is as if someone left bread crumbs for us to follow as we become more and more intelligent beings. We begin as chimps, and then come into contact with a black monolith, after which the chimps begin to use the bones of other dead animals as tools and weapons to drive out other tribes of chimps. If this film doesn't say anything about being human, nothing will. It investigates how we are the humans we are today, and hopefully will become in the not too distant future.
The film focuses on how humans have evolved over time. In all four parts of the film, a black monolith appears, inspiring human evolution and creativity. It is as if someone left bread crumbs for us to follow as we become more and more intelligent beings. We begin as chimps, and then come into contact with a black monolith, after which the chimps begin to use the bones of other dead animals as tools and weapons to drive out other tribes of chimps. If this film doesn't say anything about being human, nothing will. It investigates how we are the humans we are today, and hopefully will become in the not too distant future.