2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: FILM - Movie review - Brief article

Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is a movie about tools and technology. The use of tools, both to advance individual goals and to aid the survival of the species, the movie seems to say, is what defines humanity, what separates us from the animals. Technology--the struggle to create and control it--is what makes us distinct.

So it's a bit ironic that the best way to see 2001 is in a format that is now ancient, as far as cinema is concerned. For its 50th anniversary, the film played limited engagements in a 70 mm print overseen by Christopher Nolan, the director of Inception and the Dark Knight trilogy.

Nolan is probably the most prominent proponent of the notion that movies should be made and viewed as...