“2001: A Space Odyssey” is an act of madness and blinding, even reckless, ambition. The film seeks nothing less than to theorize on the past, present and future of human evolution. More maddening even than its objective is the film’s success. “A Space Odyssey” is the magnum opus of an unrivaled cinematic genius executing at his level best. Director Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece is the rare film that truly deserves to be called an epic.

Kubrick segments his film into three distinct sections: The first begins with the dawn of man, the second centers on the year 2001 and the third explores the time and place beyond the infinite. The first and third sections are wordless.

“2001: A Space Odyssey” starts with two prehistoric tribes of apes battling for water. They lounge and fight during the day and hide from a leopard at night. The fracases are rarely consequential or in any way meaningful. One day, a perfect monolith appears to one of the tribes. The apes are both drawn to and repelled by the structure. With immense hesitance, they finally reach out and touch the monolith. The next day, an ape finds the scattered bones of another creature. The apes discover that they can employ the bones as tools and more specifically, weapons. They go back to the water and defeat the other tribe. In celebration, an ape launches their bone into the sky. In the longest flash forward in history, the film match cuts to a nuclear warhead in the year 2001.

In 2001, rockets dance slowly among the stars, computers emote intensely, and humans more or less operate mechanically. Kubrick packs the narrative weight of his film into this second section.

While exploring the moon, Americans find a perfect monolith that sends a signal across the galaxy to Jupiter. The group of scientists and policy makers initially agree to keep this discovery secret from the rest of the world. To confirm extraterrestrial life, they create a spacecraft, Discovery, and send it to follow the signal.

The Discovery operates as a partnership between two astronauts and a supercomputer, HAL 9000. HAL runs the spacecraft while the humans exercise, watch television and eat. When HAL inexplicably starts to malfunction, the two astronauts have to outwit the computer to save their mission.

For a film starved of traditional plot development, the sequences on the Discovery are filled with genuine suspense and action. I won’t spoil the details suffice to say the situation on board the Discovery unravels spectacularly.

The third section begins on the outskirts of Jupiter. A perfect monolith orbits the planet. The Discovery approaches the monolith and is transported through a star gate to beyond the infinite. Here, one of the astronauts from the Discovery finds himself in a bedroom. He ages suddenly until he is an old man dying in bed. He reaches out from his bed towards a perfect monolith.

The astronaut is transformed and appears as a star child suspended above Earth. The film ends.

After two hours and 40 minutes, Kubrick admirably pushes his audience to contemplate their relationship with technology, their evolution as a species and their place in the universe. He does this with remarkable narrative restraint and visual and musical excess.

Narratively, he forces the audience to grapple with long wordless sequences, dialogue stripped of emotion and actions almost entirely mechanized.

At one point, in an incredibly skilled display of filmmaking, he reveals to audience that HAL can read lips. He conveys this wordlessly with intelligent editing and framing. It is nothing short of a masterclass in the storytelling principle, “show, don’t tell.” Kubrick emphasizes his magnificent visuals.

He creates stunning images that demand an engaged and invested audience. He colors every frame precisely and devises penetrating compositions. All of these beautiful visuals usually sync with grandiose classical music, whether it be Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra” or Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube.”

At once, “2001: A Space Odyssey” is both an immersive experience and a calculating intellectual exercise rich with ambiguity.

I believe a film is only as profound as the ideas and discussions it provokes. I watched “2001: A Space Odyssey” two nights ago at the Tivoli at a midnight showing. Since then, not a waking hour has gone by without me returning to the film, reliving it, debating it and loving it. I cannot recommend it enough. Discuss it with me after you see it.