2001: A Space Odyssey! In theaters! Again!

Had to document it before I forget. Last Saturday, got to see Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey for the second time in my life on 35mm at the Bytowne (how lucky am I?!).

Krystle came with me and was - luckily - the catalyst for going again. She still had yet to see a Kubrick film and I told her, well, if you're going to see 2001 at all, this is the way it was meant to be seen: on a huge screen, in a darkened theater, Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra blaring at you!

Had to drop off the road bike for maintenance at Pecco's beforehand and ended up running late. We parked and ran to buy our tickets and fortunately made it inside just as the overture was finishing up. Since it's played over a completely black screen, we couldn't see a thing. Knowing that perhaps the greatest film opening in history was about to come on, I tried to hurry us into some seats in the front once we could see. Well, we made it to the front but couldn't find seats in time so we ended up crouching in the aisles for the intro. Ah, even those circumstances weren't able to ruin my love of that opening!

Dawn of Man: Wow, so many more details you can see on 35mm as compared to a 27-inch television screen. Beautiful. Without even trying to be pretentious, I can 100% honestly say that I don't remember the still shots in this section passing by so quickly. What a difference a few years make I guess. When I first watched it I think I started getting antsy after about the third "nature" shot which seemed to last an eternity. This time around, there was never enough time to appreciate each one. I think I've now seen this movie 6 times.

Sure you watch movies without speaking to other people, but there's something incredibly special about watching a trance-like film such as 2001 with a group of other people in the dark. In my mind, that is part of the magic of watching these types of films, that a couple hundred people can be completely silent while the also silent images of Frank hurtling through space or HAL terminating the life support systems are projected.

I love this film. What a trip indeed.