Last Chance to See the Gorgeous New 2001, Maybe the Greatest Science Fiction Movie Ever

A gorgeous new print of 2001: A Space Odyssey is playing in Manhattan right now, but unless you happen to walk past the Loews Astor Plaza and spy the title on the marquee, you'd never know. It was sneaked into that one theater for an abbreviated engagement that started December 14; as of the late show this Thursday evening, it'll be gone.

Despite the once-in-forever nature of this event (2001 in 2001!), Warner Bros. heralded the rerelease of his masterwork with zero publicity?at least none that I've seen, and I do this for a living. No tv ads, no newspaper ads, no billboards, no posters, no nothing; unless you already knew where it was playing, you couldn't even find it on MovieFone, which is owned by Warner Bros.' parent company, AOL Time Warner.

What gives? The rereleased Star Wars and The Exorcist blew current releases right out of the theaters. Then again, maybe the potential success of a 2001 rerelease explains why this particular one was handled so indifferently. Warner Bros., Kubrick's home studio from 1971's A Clockwork Orange onward, had a contractual obligation to rerelease 2001 last year. Warner Bros. and New Line, both owned by AOL Time Warner, are responsible for the year's two biggest blockbusters, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Fellowship of the Ring. Could Warner Bros. have buried 2001, arguably the greatest science fiction movie ever made, so as not to steal thunder from its two new, extremely expensive holiday blockbusters?

No matter. The crowd at last Thursday's 10:15 showing suggested the mother lode Warners missed out on. I counted two dozen people?not bad under the circumstances, but still a paltry turnout for such a huge hall?but those two dozen cut across ethnic lines, and ranged in age from roughly 17 (a couple on a date) to maybe 70 (a senior woman sitting by herself near the front). The group's smallness suggested a pilgrimage. Which makes sense: legend has it that when an MGM executive viewed the finished version of 2001 back in 1968, he said the studio was about to release the first $12 million religious picture.

Kubrick never had much use for God or religion, but he was awed by what he didn't know; the sense of awe that pervades 2001 brings moviegoers closer to religious wonder than any Hollywood movie made before or since, articulating the notion of God as a concept humans measure themselves against. Kubrick's refusal to explain exactly what's happening or what it means is his masterstroke. Along with 2001's masterly compositions and editing, which render subsequent advances in special effects technology moot, Kubrick's insistence on the inexplicable is what keeps the film from becoming dated. Each time I see it, I'm pleased to realize how much I've learned since I saw it last, and humbled by how much I don't know. And that, I think, is the subject of 2001 in a nutshell: mankind bumping up against (and, in the end, transcending) the limits of its own mind.

Seeing it again for what must have been the 20th time, I was struck, most of all, by the simplicity and mysteriousness of Kubrick's metaphors, and the unparalleled control with which he deploys them. Throughout, round shapes that represent the organic and unknowable (suns, planets, moons; the gateway-eyes of leopards, apes, humans) are juxtaposed with hard, flat, machine-tooled rectangles and squares (the bone cudgel, the orbital weapons platform, the shuttle). The ship that takes the astronauts to Jupiter for their final evolutionary rendezvous with the giant monolith has a soft, circular head, a spinal column midsection and a hard, flat, rectangular backside?a merger of the organic and the manmade, reverence and arrogance. Bereft of anything resembling a standard linear narrative, the film is conceived as a series of voyages from point A to point B: caveman times to modernity, Earth to the moon, the moon to Jupiter, Jupiter and beyond the infinite. Throughout, the voyage is the point, not the destination; that's why each section of 2001 ends abruptly, just as a supposed limit on human progress has been transcended. Kubrick might as well have called the movie On to the Next Thing. (Is it coincidence that the monolith is shaped like a door?)

Despite its G rating, 2001 is a brutally violent movie, and if you think about it, it had to be: it is about progress, after all. The famous section of Richard Strauss' "Thus Spake Zarathustra" that's always associated with 2001 isn't associated exclusively with the monolith; its second appearance comes during the caveman prologue, when one of our ancestors figures out that you can use a bone to break other bones; meaning Kubrick associates this particular Strauss cut with both evolution and violence. The caveman doesn't merely create a tool; he creates a weapon, and from there it's a short hop to the domestication of livestock, the consumption of mammal meat and acquisitive warfare with rival tribes?all the things we associate with civilization, for better or worse.

By linking progress and violence, I don't think Kubrick was being cute or codemnatory; I think he was just calling it like he saw it, without judgment. For Kubrick, the ability to think (and consciously act) lifts humankind out of animal existence and into a so-called "civilized" state; yet each advance brings unforeseen side effects, and no matter how splendid or terrifying the invention, we invariably adapt it to humdrum purposes.

Some of the film's technological predictions were so on-the-money it's a bit frightening. During his top-secret trip to the moon to view the newly excavated monolith that will point the way toward Jupiter, Dr. Heywood Floyd sleeps on a commercial spacecraft while a screen on the seat in front of him plays a car commercial (he's the only person in the cabin, and still he's required to watch tv); he gains access to a restricted part of the space station via voice-print identification. In a touching moment that belies Kubrick's reputation as a cold fish, Floyd calls his daughter on Earth using a credit card and an access code and tells her that Daddy can't come to her party because he's traveling. (The daughter is played by Kubrick's own daughter, Vivian.) This, to Kubrick, is the fact of progress: astonishing things become everyday things. But humankind, the supposedly pessimistic Kubrick suggests, is never content to rest on his laurels. All the questions raised by 2001 are variations on two questions: How did we get from there to here? And what's next?

Framed

Be their guest: Fans of great animation won't want to miss the IMAX version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, arguably the early high point of the company's recent cartoon renaissance. The meticulously rephotographed and restored print playing at the Loews Cineplex Lincoln Square theater contains one new number?the enchanted servants' lament "Human Again," which is already part of the Broadway show. It's charming, if unnecessary. The real reason to see the film is the film itself, projected so big that you can appreciate the backgrounds as paintings and the characters as meticulous works of draftsmanship. This was one of the last Disney releases to depend almost exclusively on old-fashioned, ink-and-paint cel animation, rendered by an army of men and women with brushes, pens and pencils. On an IMAX screen, you can admire the textures and, in some cases, spot individual pen- and brushstrokes. Talk about moving pictures.