"Massively relevant": When Oscar winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan spoke highly of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Director Christopher Nolan, who is widely regarded for his notable work in the science-fiction genre, has spoken about Stanley Kubrick's epic film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Nolan spoke very highly of the film, crediting it for serving as a catalyst for several technological inventions that took place post the release of the film. In a BBC programme named 'Kubrick Season' back in 2019, the director praised the film by mentioning:

"The film has never failed to be massively relevant."

Let us find out what else the filmmaker shared about the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

When Christopher Nolan felt 2001: A Space Odyssey to be "perhaps the greatest" in works of science fiction

The Oscar winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who is regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of this era, has created a significant body of work over the years. His films involve transcendental themes including the manipulation of time, space and memory. Additionally, his films are noted for their complex, flawed characters, and his distinctive style of creating fragmented narratives.

The film 2001: A Space Odyssey has influenced Nolan from early on. In the BBC programme on Kubrick, the director not only talked about the movie's significance as an iconic work of art but also about its notable impact on the technological developments in the real world.

In a 2019 interview with BBC in the programme 'Kubrick Season', Christopher Nolan called the film "perhaps the greatest", adding:

"Like all great works of science fiction, and 2001 is perhaps the greatest. It's in dialogue with our ideas of the future. It's in dialogue with a continually evolving present about what the future represents, what that might be. The film has never failed to be massively relevant in a cinematic sense and in a storytelling sense but its technological relevance has sort of ebbed and flowed over the years depending on what's going on and in our world."

Nolan then further elucidated on the film's influence that exists even today. He talked about how the film, released around six decades back, had foreshadowed the technological advancements that we are currently witnessing. He said:

"When I first showed it to my kids, sort of 10 years ago, the ideas of artificial intelligence seemed to be a bit quaint, they seemed a bit per se. One of my children immediately sort of said to me "Why does this computer talk?". Because the idea of a talking computer seemed a little quaint to kids for whom the computer's just this tool that they use. It's just that they are interfacing with the outside world."

The director of Inception continued:

"But then over the previous 10 years, things have sailed back in technology very much towards AI. The idea of talking assistants, you know, with Alexa and Siri and all these electronic assistants that you talk to, and the idea of AI, it's all kind of come back massively. Then, FaceTime came along and seems completely relevant."

He added:

"I watched these guys with these screens and its iPads to all intents and purposes. So how much people making the technology of today have been influenced by the film, and how much the film is just predicting where things would naturally go. It's impossible to disentangle because 2001 has had a massive influence on the way in which we've imagined the future to be."

Nolan then further talked about Stanley Kubrick's filmmaking, and his artistic sensibilities, as he added:

"Kubrick, more than any other filmmaker, understands the potential of movies to be anything. He understands of that screen, that form in which you're watching that, who's sitting with an audience looking up at that screen. That screen can take you anywhere and do anything. There are no rules as far as he's concerned. The idea of what can cinema do that other art forms can't, how can that create a purely cinematic experience for you."

As per reports, back in 2018, Christopher Nolan, in collaboration with Warner Bros., had released 2001: A Space Odyssey again, as he had reinstated a 70mm form of the film. It was called an "unrestored" version by Nolan as he focussed on authentically delivering the film to the audience in the exact way people back in the 1960s had encountered the cinematic experience of the film.

Released way back in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey follows a group of astronauts who are assigned a space expedition to unravel the mysterious arrival of an enigmatic object on the moon.

Christopher Nolan is currently involved in the making of his forthcoming epic movie The Odyssey, which is set to release next year. The film stars an ensemble cast including Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong'o, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, and many more.