Starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, Douglas Rain

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Back in cinemas now

 

Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic celebrates its 50th  birthday by returning to the big screen in a beautiful new print that was supervised by Christopher Nolan.

It’s easy to see why Nolan was keen to play such a key role in cleaning up the original negative of 2001 and getting a new print created for posterity, as the influence on his own films is do very evident. No more so than his Interstellar which has similarly huge cosmic ideas and spectacle. And when you watch 2001 at the cinema you realise just how many other films have been directly influenced by it. Alien, Gravity, Passengers, Solaris – they all take from its DNA; but why not, when it’s such a rich source?

Full disclosure here – I always admired 2001’s technical achievements, but never really ‘got’ it. But like many things in life that you grow into (fine wines and whisky in my case) when it eventually clicks with you in the best possible circumstances, there’s something of an epiphany. It might have taken me all that time to see it, but 2001 at the cinema with this new print is peerless. By being a meticulous craftsman, Kubrick future-proofed his film, the model work being as impressive as any modern visual effects. The anti-gravity scenes are still astounding and the realistic sequences in the soundless vacuum of spaces, punctuated by the heavy breathing of the desperate astronauts, are so very tense.

While some of the anticipated future tech and fashions were off the mark, it’s still remarkable that the comms systems were prophetically accurate, and once you’re away from the 60s waiting room at the spaceport it all feels very timeless. Hal 9000 is still one of cinema’s greatest villains, acting under instructions from the company to complete the mission at any cost, a precursor to Ian Holm’s Ash in Alien. His sinister lens with glowing red light is both simplistic and terrifying at once, and his slow death by regression as Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) starts shutting him down is an unlikely moment of pathos.

And then there’s that psychedelic, trippy, final 20 minutes as Bowman is sucked through the star gate and across universes (I think!) before being dropped in a clinical neoclassical chamber, observing himself as he ages and evolves into the Star Child. Wow. The current screenings include a 15-minute intermission an hour before the end, giving you the chance to refuel before the final sensory assault. It’s not a short night out.

Verdict: Free from the distractions of a living room, and projected as big as possible, Stanley Kubrick’s influential sci-fi drama looks better now than ever before and still has the power to draw you in. Eschewing any need to explain itself, jettisoning dialogue for great swathes of its running time, and confident enough to be just what it is, 2001 at the cinema is as good as it gets. 10/10

Nick Joy