2001 a Space Ofyssey in Theatres Again

Christopher Nolan has seen the future, and it looks a lot like the past. Nolan is ane of a handful of directors who'south made no secret of his commitment to shooting movies on film for as long as possible, even every bit digital filmmaking becomes the default and peradventure an inevitability. In the 2012 documentary Side By Side, an enlightening test of the digital-versus-film divide produced and hosted past Keanu Reeves, even Nolan's longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister seemed to think the stop of film was nearly. "I volition be 1 of the terminal guys shooting picture," he tells Reeves, "and Chris Nolan will be ane of the terminal directors using film. But I'm certain that we'll exist using digital technology inside the next ten years."

Half-dozen years later, Nolan seems to be doubling downward, not only refusing to shoot digitally just turning the chance to run across 2017's Dunkirk in 70mm into a meaning selling signal. He's as well one of the driving forces behind what'due south existence billed as an "unrestored" 70mm edition of Stanley Kubrick'due south 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey that's currently playing in theaters. And perhaps non by accident, it'south providing a stunning reminder of how much life remains in the old ways of moviemaking.

"Unrestored" doesn't sound similar a selling signal, and for a film other than 2001, it might non exist. Picture show preservation has avant-garde from the early on days of cinema when movies were ofttimes discarded after their initial runs. (A 2013 study by the Library of Congress estimated that but 25 pct of films from the silent era still survive.) Only despite improved efforts, even beloved films fall into disrepair. Digital technology has been a benefaction to cinephiles, making information technology easier to become through the painstaking work of restoring a film to what information technology looked like when filmgoers first saw it.

2001: A Infinite Odyssey is a special case, though. This new re-release could not have happened if not for an endeavor to preserve the film in 1999, when the restoration squad at Warner Bros. cleaned upwards old negatives and struck new interpositives, as Nolan and Warner Bros preservationist Ned Toll recently explained to The New York Times. If Kubrick's motion picture hadn't been canonized nigh instantly upon its original release and then proven and so profitable due to continued interest, it's likely the studio wouldn't have had such rich raw material for this re-release.

Instead, the Warner Bros. team has been able to simulate what 2001 looked like l years ago, requite or take some colour correction and a remastered soundtrack. And it looks remarkable. I've seen 2001 in virtually every possible format over the years, from a taped-from-a-UHF-channel VHS copy to a newly struck 70mm impress owned by Chicago's Music Box Theater, one of the few American venues equipped to show 70mm motion picture year-circular. 2001 has, in recent years, been the centerpiece of the Music Box's annual 70mm festival, and I thought the theater's print would be the ne plus ultra viewing experience for i of my all-fourth dimension favorite films. I idea wrong.

Epitome: Warner Bros.

This could just be recency bias, but seeing the unrestored reissue at the Music Box surpassed any previous experience I've had watching the picture. Outer infinite looked blacker, the colors appeared richer, and the assault of special effects that greet astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) as he's transported "across the infinite" felt more vivid than I'd e'er experienced before. Maybe it was the appreciative audience. I heard audible gasps when the unfortunate Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) met his fate. Had they never seen the film? Or were HAL'due south choices just connecting similar they never had before?

Information technology's unlikely that Nolan has any hidden motives behind shepherding this version of 2001 to theaters, but it's hard to miss how well information technology fits an agenda he'south been pushing for a while, a vision of a cinematic futurity that doesn't carelessness its analog roots. "What I discover," Nolan tells Reeves in Adjacent, "is that the manipulations that the digital media allow y'all to do, they are seductive, but ultimately they're a little bit hollow… I call back the summer when Chips Ahoy came out with these chocolate chip cookies that were similar they just came out of the oven. They were soft, and [we thought], 'Oh, this is amazing. Information technology's a soft cookie.' And then afterward a couple of months, you're similar, 'Oh no, this is similar some horrible chemical crap.'"

Those harsh words put him at an extreme terminate of the analog / digital separate. For the past few years, Filmmaker magazine has kept tabs on how many features are shot on 35mm. In 2015, it logged 54 films. By 2017, that number had dropped to 31. But Nolan's entrenched position puts him in good company. Other 2022 films shot primarily on picture show include Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman, Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread, James Greyness's The Lost City Of Z, Edgar Wright'due south Baby Commuter, and Rian Johnson'southward Star Wars: The Final Jedi.

It's not like Nolan is a Luddite. Like many of the directors above, he makes extensive apply of digital effects. There might accept been a applied way to make Paris fold in on itself in Inception, just CGI makes information technology easier to pull off many visual effects convincingly. Compared to the work Kubrick and his team had to perform to achieve their effects back in 1968 — efforts chronicled in Michael Benson's excellent recent book Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, And The Making of a Masterpiece — Nolan looks like the Wachowskis merging live action and blitheness in the neon globe of Speed Racer.

Merely Nolan builds on an analog base of operations and shapes his films similar products of the analog era, blending CGI with practical furnishings and avoiding the confusing every-option-at-once cutting style that'due south go more common with the introduction of digital editing. Office of the wonder of 2001 comes from the way Kubrick gives viewers time to luxuriate in the images he creates, from a space station spinning in a cosmic waltz to a lunar lander coming in for a slow arroyo to an astronaut emotionlessly sunbathing while watching a pre-recorded birthday message from parents halfway beyond the solar system.

Similar Kubrick, Nolan has challenged viewers with new modes of storytelling, while still working with major studios and aiming his work at broad, general audiences. Though Nolan has yet to return to the extreme narrative trickery of his breakthrough picture, Memento, his other work similarly expects audiences to find a film'due south wavelength and stay tuned into it. Dunkirk'southward aggressive 3-timelines editing scheme, to choose one example, wouldn't work if he didn't trust viewers to follow what he was doing and give them fourth dimension to figure it out.

The re-release of 2001: A Space Odyssey isn't just an occasion to revisit a archetype. It's a chance to contemplate how far filmmakers can push mainstream audiences out of their comfort zones. And on a technological and visual level, it's an opportunity to reconsider how much analog movie theatre can yet accomplish earlier the manufacture lets the film format become entirely. Kubrick'due south movie is a marvel from the past, and when it's seen again in a form untouched past digital technology, it still seems like an ideal demo reel for filmmakers, a standard that anyone who wants to make movies should aspire to achieve. Or, in Nolan's words (once more from Side Past Side): "A transition starts with people offering a new choice, merely it finishes with taking the one-time choice away." 2001 doubles every bit a reminder that cinephiles aren't however at the point where nosotros should give up that onetime choice — and maybe nosotros never will exist.

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Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/22/17380670/space-odyssey-unrestored-version-christopher-nolan-film-analog

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