Stanley Kubrick's cinematic milestone was in every sense an experimental film, harnessing the widescreen, epic format for an intensely metaphysical, ultimately very personal use. 2001 was conceived less as a science fiction narrative than as an experience in space and time. As a re-creation of the dimensions of outer space-taking us beyond deep focus into infinite focus-it has never been matched. Neither has the grace with which Kubrick's pristine visuals literally waltz through several millennia of evolution. The film's most memorable character, the computer Hal, is the embodiment of evolutionary anxiety as we leave the mechanical age for the digital one.