I am a bit surprised you hadn't seen the movie in full uninterrupted before. It does seem very much your sort of thing. It's mine, too, and I can report a similar effect when I did see it for the first time as a teenager, which caused me to crash out the ending of my godawful Star Trek novel into a faintly mystic, cosmic-mystery attempt at transcendence that causes me to visibly wince when I think too hard about what was supposed to be the iconic image of the whole thing. I WILL TAKE NO QUESTIONS ABOUT ITS CONTENT THANK YOU.

Anyway I'm sure you have better control of the tone and story direction than I had and will make good use of both.

It takes a lot to have me sit in front of ANY 2 1/2 hour film by myself. Fortunately my friend suggested it and it sounded like a GREAT idea. It's much easier to watch an epic like that when it's a shared social experience.

Oh, now, one of my best experiences as an undergraduate was when they were playing 2001 in the State Theater, the great old sidewalk movie-palace theater in town. As awesome and enveloping as the movie is, it's incredibly more when it's the size of a football field.

hahaha actually I haven't even seen clips of it, I just know the theme and that there's a monolith

I think it's worth a watch, if you have patience for movies that are deliberately paced, and are okay with narratives in which character motivations, or even what the stakes are, are deliberately concealed-or-indecipherable. But some folks don't enjoy that sort of under-plotted story, something that's much more focused on mood and atmosphere. And if that sounds like something you're not likely to enjoy, well, you're not wrong; you just might not care for something I do like.

"Deliberately paced" is the kindest euphemism for it. Honestly, I see both sides of it; it's just that in my current frame of mind, with the assistance of friends, I really got into it. Mood and atmosphere are definitely spot-on, and it doesn't shy away from the possibility that "not understanding it" may be the whole point.

First time, huh?

Read the book. There is a major difference that is without a difference in it.

Have you seen "2010" ?