Stanley Kubrick’s epochal sci-fi epic returns to the big screen as part of the BFI’s Days of Fear and Wonder series, and after all these years it remains a trip well worth making. Expanding on Arthur C Clarke’s short story The Sentinel, this leaps from the dawn of mankind to the space-age (via one of cinema’s most striking editing juxtapositions) and beyond, transporting viewers from the world of science into a stargate full of symbolism and spectacle. Throughout, the human cast remain strangely faceless, playing second fiddle to the music of the cosmos (from Strauss to Ligeti) and the voice of Douglas Rain who brings depth and pathos (“Daisy, Daisy…”) to the role of the computer HAL 9000, the film’s most unexpectedly sympathetic character. It’s an overpowering experience, awe-inspiringly photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth, groundbreakingly enhanced by Douglas Trumbull.
