Film

Full of Stars

Why You Need to See 2001 Again

by Aaron Stewart

Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey still permeates our culture in parody and homage 30 years on, and will continue to do so, I'm convinced, until the end of human history. A sort of Lascaux cave painting of the cinema, 2001 is as iconographic a symbol of human interpretation as there ever was. A new 70mm print of the movie--restored and remastered by a team of over 100 technicians--premieres at the Cinerama this week. It's essential viewing. They don't make them like this anymore, but then, they never did make them like this; 2001 was one of those firsts.

Our lives are filled with a litany of such firsts: first sip of alcohol, first glimpse at porn, first recognition that death would claim you. Kubrick admirers share another first, the moment their cinematic cherry was popped. To make it short, then, mine: Sitting in my parents' bedroom at age eight, 2001 on television. Time lost meaning; Dave Bowman in the hotel room of infinity, watching himself grow older. Me in my parents' bedroom, feeling my life change.

Many years later, in the year 2001, I'm running down a street in London, running a fever, hoping to catch the last screening of the restored print. A nasty flu grips the city, but I ignore it because this is a pilgrimage. I'm only half-joking. I don't think any filmmaker invites repeat viewings more than Kubrick, who demands them. Sometimes it's love at first sight. Sometimes you go away puzzled, conflicted by a morass of complex emotions and problematic ideas. Life and time change you, and you reconfigure the story to fit your experience. (Let's not forget that the early reviews of 2001 were markedly negative.)

What I got watching 2001 this time had less to do with the movie itself, which was every bit as potent and visionary as I remembered, than it did with larger concerns: sensations about death and the passage of time. Kubrick's death intermingled with another, larger loss: a death of sensation. We seem to have forgotten the sheer power of movies as a cultural force.

Now, I'm not joining the intellectual, pathological school of criticism that says movies are dying. They've been saying it since the '50s, and they've always been wrong. Of course, most movies suck royally. That's the curse of the movie addict. We move from fix to fix, hoping to mainline the really good shit. That hasn't changed.

What has changed is the audience--the way we snicker to demonstrate our detachment, our skepticism toward filmmakers' lofty pretension, our understanding that it's only a movie. But during 2001, which is full of pretension (of the best kind), no one said a word. Not one mobile phone rang. The audience held its breath, and dreamed communally. That's what is dying. Movies are like gods and religions; without belief and conviction, they founder. And it's harder to believe when no one else does. But seeing 2001 this way is an experience. Looking like it was shot yesterday, sounding better than it ever has, the film engulfs the senses, a stunning reminder of the theater as place of worship; cinema as a secular church, ripe for discourse on the biggest, grandest questions.

Revisiting 2001, I brought my critical faculties. I went looking for frames and edits, but got lost in a lucid fever dream. It may seem like an outdated portrait of the future, but 2001 retains the power to nullify time. A single cut sends you forward one million years. The reverse is also true: Now, a single viewing can carry audiences back to a time when cinema held infinite possibility and infinite risk.

Or infinite boredom. A lot of people hate 2001, and they're allowed. The film is ponderously slow and lacks solid narrative and defined characters (virtues all). But to those who don't hate it, especially those who have only seen it on tape or DVD: I insist you see this new print, if only to help revive the communal state of reverie. When you watch a film projected on a movie screen, you spend half the time in darkness. Because of the shutter speed of the projector, for every frame of light there is also a frame of darkness. Some studies suggest that the effect may produce alpha waves in the brain. Movies may be more like dreaming than we think.