Realising his dream of shooting an entire film on 70mm IMAX stock, Christopher Nolan adapts Homer’s ancient Greek poem The Odyssey, a vast mythological epic and one of the foundational works of Western literature. We haven’t seen it in full IMAX but IMAX Digital, the pretender to the IMAX name that nonetheless offers the best screen in Birmingham, which for three hours immerses us in the story of a war hero’s attempt to return home and handle his past.
Other than the film’s tempo and structure, which tell the story swiftly and non-chronologically, but without ever losing us, we don’t agree on much. For José, it’s beautiful to look at; for Mike, the visual pleasures are few and far between. José likes the performances across the board; Mike expresses serious reservations about some of them. We also discuss the disappointment of the final action scene, the extent to which the film treats the Greek gods as real, Zeus’ law and how well the film represents ancient Greek culture and ways of thinking, and whether its explicit contextualisation of the story as a metaphor for PTSD is earned.
My first impressions after seeing THE ODYSSEY for the second time, the first in IMAX 70mm, is that it’s more richly a film about morality for immoral times. The 1.43 IMAX 70mm ratio and the huge screen make it a more intimate epic. One is immersed in these faces, often shot in two-shot, medium close-up, close-up. It’s amazing to see the preponderance of these shots in an epic. One is instantly immersed in these thinking, feeling beings. Focus pull doesn’t seem easy in this format and often the frame goes in and out of focus when in movement, which adds to the lack of clarity in the character’s understanding. There is a lot of shooting through screens, particularly in the scenes with Penelope, which have a similar effect. Mike was telling me the other day that in an interview with cinematographer with Hoyte van Hoytema, he discusses the compositional restrictions of the format, how everything important has to be shown in the centre of the frame, and this viewing experience confirms it. The screen is so huge, and one is so immersed, everything important happens at the centre of the frame. Of course this the begs the question of the experience in digital widescreen IMAX and whether that’s a diminished experience, and if so how.
In this viewing I particularly appreciated Travis Scott as The Bard in the opening; the calm, elegant strength of his bearing and the way he says the opening lines:’ “A face… a fleet… a war… a man… a thought… a trick… a trick to break the walls of Troy… and burn it screaming to the ground!”, and which reinforces my disagreement with those accusing the film of being tokenistic with people of colour (including Wilson).
Maybe because of the format, I also found the film more moving (Leguizamo on Odysseus’ return; the exchange between father and son, coded and clear; the husband’s return, each emotional beat achieved by the actors at their peak; and I liked Tom Holland much more this time around, the callowness, lack of strength, powerlessness, etc being part of the character, though I do think the final exchange in that scene of recognition could have been better handled. But this is quibbling. A serious film about our times, beautiful, delicate, exciting. The image of the cyclops clearly taken from Goya’s Saturn Devouring his son becomes even more potent this time around. Also seeing it at the BFI’s IMAX brought out all the sound work on the film, a work of art on its own, a sharpening of feeling. I think it a better film this second time around and now want to see it once more.
Third time seeing The Odyssey, in yet another format, 70mm. at London’s Picturehouse Central. It becomes clear that the only design proper in relation to composition is in the IMAX 70mm format, the rest is mere cropping, with some of the beauty and story-telling lost in translation to other formats. I still loved seeing it, now with other episodes eliciting emotion, this time, for example, those last lines of the siren scene, ‘What you want most is what you can’t have, and what you can’t have is what you already had and lost’, which seem straight out of a noir. What comes into sharper focus on this third viewing is the ingeniousness of the structure, the telling and re-telling of the Trojan Horse scene, by different people and at different times, its play with time, point-of-view, reliability, and then re-told again to Penelope at the end, just at that moment and related to the scene where Odysseus return Antinous his shame, just as he’s acknowledge, perhaps by confessing to Penelope, unburdened himself, of his own. And doesn’t that whole set up with Penelope, the way, she’s photographed, now convey both cloister and confessional? I find it brilliant. It does now seem that when most people refer to the weakness of the script they’re really saying they don’t like the dialogue, primarily Tom Holand saying Mom and Dad. I’ve noted no references to structure, imagery or sound design when detractors reference a script. Sometimes, as Richard Brody commented recently, the process of translation encompasses translating written words into sounds and images, sometimes images and sounds are part of the script, and the process, perhaps more of realisation in another medium, which I suppose is also a process of translation, if of another type or degree.
We visit BFI Southbank for a 70mm screening of The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s epic period drama. It’s a super-sized film – 215 minutes, not including the intermission – and it deserves a super-sized podcast, for which we’re joined, as we occasionally are, by Mike’s brother, Stephen, who’s already seen the film once. It’s an extraordinarily complex, subtle and absorbing film that draws on countless themes and parts of history in telling its story of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor and architect who escapes to America and finds a wealthy client enamoured with him.
We dig in to the film’s themes with breathless enthusiasm, and talk sex, racism, the immigrant experience, long takes, rape, capitalism, doing things for effect, art, aspiration, jealousy, the value of 70mm, and much more. José describes The Brutalist as his film of the year; Mike ponders whether he likes it more than the Robbie Williams monkey movie.
Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited passion project, Megalopolis, self-funded to the tune of $120m, has finally arrived. We love it. It’s wild, imaginative, earnest, and beautiful. We discuss and decry some of the criticisms of it we’ve already seen while coming up with some of our own – how could we have known that an octogenarian might hold rather traditional views? – in between breathlessly enthusing about what captivated us.
Megalopolis is hardly a perfect film but it’s a visual treat and a fantastic cinematic experience. Don’t let the naysayers’ sniping turn you off. Indulge!
Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptation of Dune makes its first appearance on the podcast in the form of the second film in the series – we saw the first when it came out but never podcasted on it. With the lore in place, the scene set, and the characters established, Dune: Part Two is free to develop romance, engage in action, and tell the story of the construction of a messiah. It’s beautiful, exciting entertainment – as long as you can remember everyone’s names and what their magic powers are and what they’re up to and why.
José feels no such issues keeping track of Part Two‘s various story elements, but Mike hasn’t done the homework and finds that the film isn’t going out of its way to help him. But no matter! The imagery on offer is astonishingly pretty, reassuringly expensive, and tuned for maximum visual impact – though we wonder how poetic it is, and ask ourselves to what extent the imagery in Villeneuve’s other work lingers in the mind, despite its premium sheen. We also discuss the degree to which we feel Part Two really feels like it’s buying in to its more supernatural elements. It tells a story of prophecy, visions, and unlikely fates, but, Mike suggests, also offers mechanisms and plausible explanations for things we see, arguably favouring its scepticism to avoid putting off an audience unwilling to go along with the otherworldly.
Whether you care or not, whether you can follow the details or not, there’s no reason to not see Dune: Part Two on the biggest and best screen available. For the visual design and production alone, it’s value for money – that the rest is good is a lovely bonus.
Based on true events, Killers of the Flower Moon tells a story that invokes the foundational genocide upon which the USA was built, but has its own peculiarities. The Osage Nation, a Native American tribe and unusually the owners of their reservation in Oklahoma, became extraordinarily wealthy in the early 20th century upon finding their land gushing oil – but in pursuit of their riches, the white population in the region devised a plan to rob them of their individual land rights, which were only allowed to be inherited. In telling this story, Killers of the Flower Moon justifies its three and a half hours of runtime – though there’s no reason not to include an intermission! – and Leonardo DiCaprio, in particular, has never been better.
We discuss the specific events depicted and the wider history to which they relate and that they evoke in microcosm; the complexities in DiCaprio’s character, who participates knowingly in hideous crimes but truly loves his wife, whose community and family he’s devastating, all the while not quite having the mental acuity to understand the full extent of what he’s involved in; the quality and qualities of the performances and characterisations; the visual design, effects of lighting, and evocation of the feeling of so many mid-20th century Westerns through subtle and specific elements of the cinematography; and the idiosyncratic ending and what it has to say to its audience.
Writer-director Robert Eggers, who previously wowed us with The Lighthouse, returns in style with a brutal, bloody Viking epic, based on Amleth, the figure in Scandinavian legend that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It’s the first of his films to see a wide, mainstream release and large-scale ad campaign to match, and it’s perhaps for that reason that it is in some sense less demanding that its audience put the work in to understand and interpret it – although there remains plenty of room for that, and it’s in a different league to the blockbusters with which it’s competing. It’s a film to put down what you’re doing right now and see at the cinema – it’s vicious, atmospheric, and beautifully shot, and you won’t regret seeing it where it’s meant to be seen.
Ad Astra sees a withdrawn, isolated Brad Pitt take to the stars as Roy McBride, an astronaut in search of his father, and with him writer-director James Gray shows us stunning imagery and brings us brilliantly into McBride’s suppressed mental state. José is head over heels in love with the film’s epic feel, its exploration of universal human problems, the way in which it imagines a human race that, in spreading to and taming other planets and moons, brings its pre-existing problems with it, and the way in which Gray expresses McBride’s inner turmoil through action. Mike is less keen, particularly arguing for the weakness of the film’s first act, and asking questions of the film’s gender theming, but finds much to love too.
Ad Astra is a vast, careful, $100m art movie, the likes of which only Christopher Nolan normally gets to make. It’s very much worth your time. See it on the largest screen you can.
The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.
