It was a bittersweet weekend for Mumbai cinephiles. Steven Spielberg’s latest spectacle, Ready Player One , was denied of showtimes. The film, set in 2045, is about virtual reality gaming, and the 71-year-old auteur filmed it on 35mm. India was supposed to get its digital release the same day another legendary filmmaker, Christopher Nolan, landed in the city to champion his cause for celluloid filmmaking. With Nolan, arrived the film prints of his Oscar winning films: Dunkirk (70 mm) and Interstellar (35 mm) for a special screening. I attended the former, at the IMAX theatre in Wadala.
“It played in this version [70mm 15 perf IMAX format] earlier in about 38 theatres around the world, then in about hundred 70mm 5 perf cinemas which is slightly different format,” said the garland-wearing Nolan, after mentioning twice that “this is the way it was intended to be seen.” Nolan presented the film along with his producer (also his wife) Emma Thomas. They were welcomed with a standing ovation by the full-house cinema hall, with some fans even chanting “Chris, Chris, Nolan, Nolan” a la “ Deshi Deshi Basara Basara ” chant from his The Dark Knight Rises .
The digital projector was ditched for the day and an analog projector was setup right in the middle of the auditorium (and just above my centremost seat in the house). Soon, the whirring sound of the projector was submerged under Hans Zimmer’s iconic clock-ticking soundtrack of the film. And what unspooled before our eyes were breathtaking visuals in its richest quality. The colours, so bright and natural; the frames, with more palpable depth, making the experience even more ethereal. It wasn’t 3D, but it did make the viewing immersive.
I had seen the film before twice – in regular digital and digital IMAX. I wish this theatre had the sound system that of the IMAX screening I had experienced before. Last time, the ear-deafening fighter planes and the overall sound design and soundtrack of the film shook the seat beneath me. This film is more an aural experience than just visual. With his love for IMAX, Nolan makes 2D feel like an under-explored format.
Nolan not only loves IMAX, he respects it. Dunkirk , along with three timelines, also traverses three landscapes: land, water and air. He economically chooses to capture only the more ambient shots – the air fights and the beaches – on the heavier IMAX camera. Tighter spaces, which are mostly the sequences set on a boat sailed by Mark Rylace, have been shot on the lighter, traditional 70mm camera. This leads to noticeable difference in the grainy texture and sudden shift in the aspect ratio: from 1.43:1 to 2.20:1; also lending the claustrophobic feel to it. And this is where the much hyped Wadala theatre somewhat marred the experience: the screen size could not fully accommodate the 70mm IMAX frames as the horizontal edges ran out of the screen.
Who would not want to watch the film the way filmmakers intend to show, but do we have the right infrastructure? Not only physical infrastructure but also economical. If all such shows would cost ₹2000 bucks, will you be willing to spend it every weekend? The whirring sound of projector adds romance for every cinema-lover, but will they take care of it so that specks of dust don’t get enlarged and blot the imagery on screen, as it did in the Saturday show?
For it to happen, we need a more cinema-respecting culture. It's a catch-22 situation, one could argue. Otherwise, we would also have had Ready Player One playing in the next screen the way Spielberg originally intended.
