2001 Is Still Teaching Us How to Pay Attention to Movies

It always feels like a cop-out when people sidle up to you as you're discussing any overtly creative work of art and intone, "Well, people don't have the attention span for that kind of thing nowadays, do they?" The thinking is that anything that requires sustained concentration couldn't possibly hold the collective focus of a group, which is in part why I'm fascinated when I watch Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is commemorating its 50th anniversary at a time when we most need to be reminded of its potency. Under the aegis of Christopher Nolan, a new "unrestored" 70 mm version of 2001 has been making the rounds this summer, and Warner Brothers is putting out a Blu-ray version in the fall that will likely stand as definitive, so now is the time for this movie to teach us a lesson all over again. According to Michael Benson's Space Odyssey, which was published in April, Kubrick told a friend he wanted 2001 to be "the first science-fiction film which isn't considered trash," which was why Kubrick roped Clarke into working on the screenplay, which then led to Clarke composing a novel so he'd have something to base the script on. Kubrick's disdain for sci-fi's history wasn't entirely fair, but even its best exemplars came cloaked in the robes of the genre: atomic bugs munching their way through civilization, pissed-off aliens deciding to get the jump on Earth folk before the latter took to space and screwed up a lot of stuff for a lot of races unlike our own.