Dunkirk, an IMAX Experience

I have, somehow, managed to see all of Christopher Nolan‘s films in theatres, since I landed in this part of the hemisphere. Not with full conviction or intention though. At least not all of them. I had no idea who Christopher Nolan was when I saw my first Nolan film.

My friends were gung-ho about The Dark Knight when it came out and wanted to watch it in a theatre. I didn’t care for it much but decided to tag along anyway. So on a sunny summer day, we walked a couple of miles, across the lift bridge, to a 100-year-old theatre. The theatre had no atrium to speak of, so there was a long line snaking out of it on to the sidewalk. We somehow managed to get tickets and parked ourselves in the gallery. I don’t remember much, but do remember craning my neck past the two prominent pillars in front of me to catch Joker blowing up a hospital.

Inception opened to rave reviews and I was definitely caught up in the marketing net. My friend and I decided to watch it on a weekend eve. We raced in his Buick Century, across a bridge to the next university town multi-screen chain, to be on time. Along the way, we made a wrong turn. In that part of the country, wrong turns are not forgiven easily. We got there late and all the space that was left was in the front row. And that too, not in the middle. The music was a constant crescendo and it was all a blur. And that’s about all I can remember. Soon, we were back in the Buick riding across the same bridge. The bridge had large letterings on the side, which reads ” … THE WORLD TAKES”. This time, I was able to read the whole thing.

My girlfriend and I watched The Dark Knight Rises on a whim, late night, probably to kill time, at the Rave Cinemas. The film was as dark and bleak as a snowless winter night in the tallgrass prairies.

I watched Interstellar with my parents when they were visiting the Brazos Valley. I deliberately chose a non-lieMAX presentation at the local Cinemark. I was overall disappointed by the bland shots of corn fields, unimpressive acting, and incredulous plot line. Especially incredulous is the dystopian part of the story that unfolds on the earth. The cinematography reminds me of my attempts to take a portrait. I am an amateur landscape photographer and take very ‘impersonal’ portraits. I think Hoyte van Hoytema can’t be faulted for the lack of beauty that makes the film ‘personal’. You can find plenty of beauty in Her and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It is Nolan’s nerdiness that limits Hoytema’s ability to make ‘personal’ human connection, visually. The visuals do have a lyric quality, but sans emotion. Hans Zimmer shines with his evocative soundtrack. The organ pieces make the soundtrack bring out a feeling of yearning and of epic and of wonder at the same time. And as usual, Nolan delivers a fantastic climax in the bookcase scene. If the film went past that, it was not needed.  

Against this backdrop, I was really excited at the news of the release of Dunkirk. May be because it is of the war genre, which I find at home, or may be because of the large format photography and projection, which I am in awe. The best projection format available is 15 perf 70 mm IMAX. I found one better. I found a theatre that can project this film on to a 120 feet wide domed screen while blasting over 10,000 Watts of sound. I geeked out on the IMAX process the week before. I also watched Apocalypse Now Redux (I had not seen the Redux version) the day before to serve as a comparison aid.

On a Saturday morning, my wife and I, with a sufficient number of La Croix cans, set out on a 200 mile (one way) trip to watch Dunkirk. We got there about 10 minutes to start. A large number of people were already lined up and I was dreading a repeat of my Inception experience. We were let into the inner atrium. There we waited for 10 more minutes. Across the glass projection room, we could see the projectionist cleaning the lens with rubbing alcohol. He then fiddled with the film on large a platter. Next, he routed the film through an endless number of pulleys and tensioners and the projector itself. Finally, the projector was raised up. We were let in. We quickly found the middle two seats a row or two below the projector (the projector is more or less in the middle of all seats projecting upwards on to the dome). The seat back was reclined practically horizontal. Slightly uncomfortable. As we would later find out, majorly uncomfortable.

The film started after an announcement and a few trailers. Notable among them, the trailer of Blade Runner 2049. The first reaction was that of severe disorientation. The image stretched out from one end of the peripheral vision to the other. The curved dome silver screen wrapped around us, thrusting us into the live action. It was immensely difficult to take all that in. In the opening shot, the two story houses towered floor to ceiling on the screen, drawing my eyes’ full range of vertical motion to see them all. The shots rang out with such a bang and at such proximity that I was on the edge instantly. Then the Stukas dived with such a blood-curdling wail that you could feel the terror. The explosions literally shook the earth. Such was the power of the sound system. The aerial scenes of the Dunkirk beachhead stretched endlessly vast. The dogfight scenes had a feeling of true disorientation in three-dimensional space. The relentless ticking and rising crescendo of a soundtrack relent only towards the end when it pretends to be hopefull. The three plotlines do converge towards the end, but they do so twistedly and muddled. The close-up scenes had a headache inducing camera motion. The close up in 15 perf 70 mm presentation was detailed enough to make a moon map of Kenneth Branagh’s face. Color grading intruded every now and then pushing an oranger version of flames and a bluer version of currents. Sometimes a greener version of Tommy helmets. The film sometimes showed a quality of newsreel. The focus was off often. The frames were composed hastily or clumsily. The dogfight scenes were shot with the camera mounted on the outside of canopy, capturing less than optimum image quality but more realism. May be the focus was soft because the medium is old school film (though 65mm). The three plotlines do converge to a satisfying climax, as you would expect from Nolan. But as usual with Nolan films, the film continues on redundantly. Incredulously, the spitfire, piloted by Tom Hardy, despite losing power, manages to shoot down a diving Stuka!

Verdict? This is not the best war film. Far from it. It tells three survival stories set against the Dunkirk backdrop. The telling is splendid. But the complex backdrop is reduced to its skinny version. The number of extras highlights this. You could see the evacuation ships were largely empty for the lack of extras. Ditto with the number of ships, vehicles, equipment, armament etc. Add to it the dearth of other skin tones on the beachhead or on the evacuation ships. The film blows up the three plotlines, on large format, and situates them in this skinny backdrop. It nearly gets away with it. In fact, it rides the 70mm IMAX crutches to get away. And the IMAX/70 mm is an unparalleled experience, but its lack of historical nuance is more than an annoyance. And it may also be a reflection of the times we live in, with the majority of Brits regarding colonialism as something to be proud of. Of the Brexit times. A film that goes ‘alone’. Regardless, I endorse Dunkirk a 100%. Watch it in the best possible format. It’s worth the effort.

P.S. The very next day, we watched Dunkirk again, at the local Cinemark. It was an XD presentation though, with reclining lounges as part of the package. May be 3rd or 4th best format available. The experience was much more passive. Akin to poring at a large window of craziness, but divorced from it and in comfort. The gunshots didn’t have the intensity of cracking open my skull. The Stuka dive did not scare me. The explosion, although shook the earth, did not pack any punch. Halfway, we went and sat closer to the screen. The sound got better. And immersion improved a lot too. But the resolution suffered. Kenneth Branagh’s sideburns reduced to a hair blob. The Dover cliffs were not towering. Nevertheless, the whole experience was still compelling, with not a dull moment.

 

 

 

My Neighbor Totoro and Others

I had always known about Miyazaki-san but never had a chance to see any of his legendary animations. So I was pleasantly surprised when the local Cinemark featured My Neighbor Totoro, as part of the Studio Ghibli Festival. Determined to not miss this opportunity, I showed up early at the theater, with my wife in tow. She was initially piqued both at the sticker shock of the ticket price and at the prospect of sitting through an unknown Japanese animation film. I had not told her what we were going to see.

The film is set in rural Japan, probably in the post-war 50s. Most of the action revolves around a house situated on a slope. This immediately took me down the memory lane to my own childhood, my time spent at my grandparent’s house during summer holidays. Their home, similarly, was on a slope, with woods in the back on a higher ground and a path with steps leading towards lush paddy fields in the front. The verandah, the well, the steep wooden stairs were all familiar. So were the various nooks and corners, and the attic, where soot gremlins could hide.

My Neighbor Totoro film poster

 

The film has a large furry creature called Totoro, a creature completely in the imaginations of the two sister protagonists, Satsuki and Mei. My Totoro was probably the lonely cow housed in a small barn, always visible from many of the windows. It was as giant as Miyazaki’s Totoro, but with horns instead of whiskers. Occasionally, I’d get up at night and shine a flashlight to find my Totoro busy munching on hay, with glowing eyes in the dark. I’d feed it banana leaves and peels, and in return, get wet sandpaper licks. My cowlicks at that time were real cowlicks. My Totoro was real.

There are not many films that I’ve seen that have this inherent quality of making a soul connection with your childhood. Lot’s of movies portray childhood, but very few make that deep inroad into your psyche. Richard Linklater’s Boyhood or Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom are good examples of movies that are like comfort food during a sick day or ice popsicle on a hot summer day. They offer a sweet nostalgic drive into your childhood, with rose tinted glasses on. But they fail to make that connection. At this point, I can’t help but mention that these two accomplished directors were born in Houston and seem to have cut their teeth in Austin, both in Texas. But there are a few films, that make you think what a deep loss is a childhood gone, once you cross the Rubicon into adulthood. Or rather, there are certain scenes in some of these films that do this really well.

There is a scene in Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, in which a truck is fumigating with DDT, probably set in the 50s Texas. To me, this was an exact replication of a scene, in which a Nissan 1-ton army truck drove around our neighborhood in Siliguri Corridor, billowing thick white DDT smoke.

In Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, Marcello Mastroianni is triggered into a flashback sequence, which ends with the now famous phrase: Asa Nisi Masa. Kids in that scene are mollycoddled by their parents and extended family, while they play and run amok. Reminded me of the giddy days. An atmosphere of overbearing love. Rather, reminded me of the days that are long gone and of the people who had made their exit in haste.

Guiseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso is another one. It may be too melodramatic to be of my taste, but it has some important parallels with my own life. The irrecoverable relationships that you leave behind when you move away are one of the parallels.

And then there is Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror. The Mirror is what I’d do if I have to encapsulate my life for posterity, instead of writing an autobiography. The Mirror is what I’d do to communicate the human condition to aliens. The Mirror stands alone in its completion as an ode to a life gone by. A self-composed oneiric-ode.

I first saw The Mirror when I was in college. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. At that moment, I was not a child anymore. The sounds and images are indelibly etched in my mind. The sounds of a barking dog, of the falling rain and that of a burning barn. The vibrant feathers of the cockerel. The rustling of leaves. The dream-like sequences were not restricted to the protagonist’s loved ones or events in his personal life. They also included political events, as they should be, situating his life in his times.

The Mirror supper scene table

The supper scene, in which a cat walks on the table and gets salt dusted on it (or it could be milk) by the kids, is eerily similar to what unfolded in my own childhood. Similar kitchen table. A similar cat would occasionally show up and beg for food. We used to feed it and pester it in equal measure.

Soon enough, the Ghibli Film Festival presentation was over. I realized the theater was full of people, as they stood up. Nobody clapped. We waded our way out into Texas sun blast with squinting eyes.