One of world’s finest filmmakers makes a feverish pitch for ‘film’ projection, preservation; Bollywood biggies line up to listen
Mayank Shekhar (MID-DAY; April 1, 2018)

Like with his films, one could go back and forth, and back again, chatting with Christopher Nolan, the master-director, who first made his name with Memento (2000), and upped the ante thereafter with Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-12), The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and most recently, Dunkirk (2017). On his maiden visit to India however, Nolan stuck to a set script: speaking primarily on the production, projection, and preservation of celluloid (the medium in which we’ve always caught movies), as against digital (how most movies are currently shot, and watched — even on the big screen).

It was Nolan’s part-time role as a film activist that drew Bollywood’s A-list — Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan onwards — to a close-door meeting at the Yash Raj Studio, where the filmmaker made a strong case for both exhibitors, and studios, to at least allow the “invariably superior, photo-chemical film” as a choice to shoot, and project cinema in.

Nolan doesn’t make much of digital being simply a cheaper medium for cinema, arguing that one “can’t cut corners (with the medium)”, while being okay with spending far more on stars, or locations, anyway. And besides, he said, every call in filmmaking — right from casting, to the stories — is “led by emotion.” Evidently responding to Nolan’s impassioned plea, at least two cinematographers, Sudeep Chatterjee (Padmaavat, Dhoom 3, Chak De India), and the veteran, Santosh Sivan (Dil Se, Asoka, etc), promised to shoot their next film on celluloid, rather than go digital.

From the audience’s perspective however, and in the particular case of India, that is geographically spread out, with several remote corners, what the replacement of print with digital did was make a movie accessible to every theatre simultaneously, rather than a staggered release, that were once the norm — given physical transportation of prints.

Reacting to this observation, Nolan told mid-day, “Theoretically, that could be an advantage. But I don’t see why anybody would care about that. You ( as an audience) don’t have to carry prints. You just turn up (to the theatre). In the same way, no one looks at Amazon as being old-fashioned, because they use mail-service to deliver. It’s just about logistics. I don’t know much about the distribution system in India. But the network in the United States is one of the most magnificent operations ever. We could distribute 15,000 prints across the world, with films releasing at the same time. I don’t think anyone should take pride in getting rid of that, and replacing it with highly compressed digital signals. You shouldn’t care that it’s easier for me to shoot with a smaller, digital camera than a big one, either. What you should care about is whether you get your money’s worth while you’re watching a film — as against how difficult it was for me to make it, or for Warner Bros to move prints around.”

As for films also being at the cusp of what is being touted as a dramatic revolution, what with virtual and augmented reality aiming to provide immersive experience that might be hard for traditional cinemas to replicate, Nolan told mid-day, “With a lot of new technology, there is a moment of confusion over how one can frame them in terms of existing media. At the end of the day, (the new technology) finds its own path. Unlike ten years ago, I don’t get asked about video games anymore.”

Which is in line with how technologies don’t always follow a linear pattern, in terms of disrupting, destroying older ones. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, film preservationist and founder, Film Heritage Foundation — who’s brought down Nolan for much-needed cinema evangelism — highlighted, for instance, how tickets for special screenings in Mumbai of Nolan’s Dunkirk in the original 70 mm format, and Interstellar, in 35 mm, got sold out in 10 minutes of their announcement online. “They’re also good films,” Nolan interjected.

Of course.

Emma Thomas (Christopher Nolan's wife), Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (film preservationist), Tacita Dean (visual artist) and Nolan


Hollywood director in conversation with filmmaker Shyam Benegal