Two thousand and nineteen is the year we make contact with the star of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Keir Dullea. This is an event that was over two years in the making. In fact, it was conceived as a 50th anniversary screening designed to link it with the NASA program– “From Imagination to Reality.” However, due to director Christopher Nolan’s national re-release of the “unrestored” version of Stanley Kubrick’s film– one that played at Chicago’s Music Box in 70mm– our event had to be postponed and we went in another direction. Instead of Arthur C. Clarke, we visited a world created by Pierre Boulle.
When the opportunity to screen 2001 finally presented itself, we knew this would be the ideal film for the Pickwick’s new “Megatheatre.” One thing was certain though. We were not going to show it without actor Keir Dullea in attendance. His role as Commander Dave Bowman, the astronaut who travels through the hallucinogenic stargate, would become his best-known in a career that goes back to 1957. He is a fantastic actor and a wonderful, engaging guest. There is a reason Keir’s appearances sell-out around the country. It is with great anticipation that we welcome our first “movie star” to Park Ridge. He will be interviewed before the screening by film historian Raymond Benson. (Raymond is also a friend of the Kubrick family.)
The Pickwick Theatre’s screening of 2001 is now the “50 Plus 1” anniversary screening. Fittingly, it follows in the wake of the Apollo 11 fiftieth anniversary this past July. Stanley Kubrick’s film was made during the middle of the 1960s when the “Space Race” between the U.S. and Soviet Union was at its height. By the time of the film’s release in 1968, Man had not yet reached the Moon. Yet, the newspapers that year followed Apollo 8, and the public read in large, block letters such headlines as “Apollo Feat Opens New Space Vistas.” The film, reflecting the optimism of the early 1960s, presents a vivid realization of space exploration and lunar travel.
However, fifty years later, our society has failed to make good on those dreams of the 1960s. The Moon landing anniversary wasn’t celebrated on the Moon. We have no colonies there or elsewhere. There isn’t even a space station that remotely resembles the rotating wheel (Space Station V) of 2001. We’ve fallen short of that dream, mired down by earthbound issues and political turmoil. With gun violence, racial unrest, and environmental neglect being today’s leading headlines, we are seemingly de-evolving as an intelligent lifeform, no longer able to see (or reach for) the stars through a polluted sky.
But 2001 keeps alive the flicker of the possible– an inspiring testament to what can be accomplished. The film is a visionary work that shows the benefits of technology (as well as its threat) and presents a challenge to the modern film industry to expand its scope of cinema. Like the great Monolith itself, 2001 stands as a sentinel and continues to shape the direction of our hopes and imagination. Visually, it shows us what can be realized. Thematically, it points the way to a future when humanity has been reborn and become transcendent.
~MCH