Video review here: https://youtu.be/p8nBFxgBlyQ

2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick, projected in 70mm film. I am so happy that I had the opportunity to watch the work of one of the greatest artists ever right at the height of his powers in the theater setting.

There isn’t a lot to say about 2001 that hasn’t already been said over and over again. The movie is a total enigma, when it comes to the subject matter AND the multitude of responses it gets from people. It’s a very personal film for me, I remember first seeing it when I was around 14 or 15. I had just watched A Clockwork Orange for the first time, which was my first Kubrick film, and I absolutely loved it so naturally I had to seek out his other movies and I happened to come across 2001. And I didn’t get it. I appreciated the special effects and the cinematography for their beauty, but except for the HAL-9000 sequences I wasn’t enthralled. I wasn’t necessarily bored, but I wasn’t accustomed to the idea of constantly having to piece things together, so the significance of the monolith or the stargate scene was completely lost on me. I didn’t really understand what it was trying to say about human evolution and technology and the nature of our existence.

A few years later in my first year of college I was taking a Film Appreciation elective course and one of the last movies we got to watch was 2001. The screening took place in a big, dark theater room with an awesome sound system and I just remember it being one of the craziest sensory experiences ever. I was blown away, all of us spent an hour talking about it after class, and the kind of philosophical discussions we were having made me realize how thematically deep the movie was and I grew a new appreciation for it.

Since then I have probably given it a rewatch every year, and like everyone else, I’m still discovering new things that I never realized on previous watches. It seems like it’s infinitely rediscoverable. Naturally when I heard that they’d be having a 70mm screening of 2001 in my area to celebrate its 50th anniversary, I had to go. I’ve been craving that same buzzing feeling I got when I watched it back in film class. It’s safe to say that it did, many times over.

Seeing this projected in 70mm just immersed me. The last movie I saw in this format was Dunkirk, which looked REALLY good, but 2001 looks better and it’s 50 years old! And it’s interesting that the guy overseeing the new 70mm print of 2001 happens to be Christopher Nolan. For those who don’t know, 70mm film is approximately estimated to be the equivalent from 12k to 16k resolution, which is sixteen times the amount of pixels you would see on a 4k display. In layman’s terms, you are not going to see a clearer, more vivid image anywhere else.

From the initial scene, The Dawn of Man, I was captivated and I didn’t take my eyes off the screen for the rest of the running time. The bone-strike smash cut, the spacecraft flying to classical music, the eerie HAL 9000 lip-reading, the acid-trip like flight through the cosmos, all these iconic scenes are still as cinematically powerful as they were 50 years ago. Watching this again made me acknowledge the ballsy artistic decisions Kubrick made. He truly didn’t care if this was a commercial product. No voiceover, no excess exposition to over-explain things, and this was in 1968! Can you imagine how CONFUSED everyone was when they went to go see this? Google wasn’t a thing, IMDB wasn’t a thing, there wasn’t any sort of explanation or interpretation you could just look up. I can’t even imagine how shattering the ordeal would be.

Besides the special effects and the technical aspects of 2001, what really drives home its staying power are the timeless themes that’ll we’ll always be wondering about. I think that Stanley Kubrick was onto something that could be appealing to anyone — the film to me feels like it’s an amalgamation of scientific progress and the classic myth of divine intervention in our journey to become what we’re destined to be. The symbolism digs and seers into our subconscious, the monolith could be interpreted as the gods to all of our religions, or whatever catalyst that jump-starts human civilization. Following up the opening sequence, with the slow montage of our most advanced technology, spacecraft, drift effortlessly through what was previously thought unconquerable inspires us, and instills a sense of pride in our own species.

2001 begs us to ask the question, “What happens if we go further? Can we continue to learn, innovate, and improve? What happens if we do?” Kubrick’s answer seems to be that it’s going to be some kind of enlightenment. The Star Child, the fetus enclosed in the orb of light, is a motif of hope, purity, and possibly a view of celestial transcendence or reincarnation. The possibilities are endless, so I think Kubrick was attempting to show us ourselves. His view of what humanity consists of, where we stand in this endless mass of chaos and confusion. The differing ideologies, religions, philosophies, the differing answers to the question of how we should conduct ourselves in this world, all stitched together in an archetypal way that relates to us all.

Immediately check your surrounding theaters to see if this is playing near you, because if it is you really owe it to yourself to go. Whether you’ve never seen 2001 or if you’ve seen it 20 times, go and enjoy the pinnacle of all of Kubrick’s works. 10/10, A+, you won’t regret it.