By Mike Heneghan
Cinema is heading for a crossroads. We all know it, we can all feel it, even if we don’t notice it. So much has changed in such a short time in how we consume media: the lightning-fast turnaround from the cinema to home media (remember missing a film in the cinema, and then waiting for months for it to come out before you could finally see it?), the closure of rental stores, the prevalence of streaming video (and piracy… shush), the release of high-quality films to home media after having a very limited or no theatrical run, the disappearance of the medium budget films and the ballooning to colossal scales the budgets of big movies… and of course, 3D.
3D (or ‘Stereoscopy’) has become one of the major contributing factors in the transformation of cinema into the rollercoaster culture that it has become, where the multiplex more resembles a summertime amusement park than a movie house. As a matter of fact, I was at the cinema today and my ladyfriend remarked that she expected the seats to have safety-belts or a harness.
3D has been around for a while. In 1935, the Lumière Brothers attempted to popularize the technique, making the actuality film Train Pulling Into a Station (a remake of their 1896 film of the same name). ‘Actuality Films’ were simple documents of the world as it was, 50 second records of life in front of the camera.
It was with Train Pulling into a Station that the popular (perhaps mythical) story of the audience running to the back of the theatre in terror because a train was bearing down on them comes from, though it is mixed up (if it ever happened at all) with the projection of the original in 1896.
The human eye was a jumping off point for the development of the technique, so stereoscopic cameras shot two different images onto one strip of film.
Now perhaps the technique just proved too expensive, or unpopular, or impractical. It could just simply be that the Hollywood machine had at that stage embraced too fully what became known as the ‘classical Hollywood’ style, close to the style of cinema familiar to us today. Instrumental in this was D.W Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), which while being morally and racially repugnant, was a technical marvel.
Whatever the reason, it was the end of 3D, for now at least. As illustrated by the terrified audience (even if they’re not real), the technique was very effective, maybe because those ‘actuality’ films were single, static shots without scale constantly changing in the blink of an eye like they did in the language of cinema, with close-ups, medium long shots, tracking shots and all the rest.
3D was revived in the 1950’s, and the 1980’s, but never with such exuberance as today. Because of all the reasons mentioned earlier, something has to set the cinema apart as a medium of its own, and keeping an audience captive just doesn’t cut it anymore.
But let’s be honest: it’s not 3D, is it? The world around us: that’s 3D. The reason we grapple with 3D cinema is because it’s not like that. We should be able to see around an object, but when we move our heads Jake Sully stays as the same flat image. 3D must operate in tandem with the aforementioned standard of long shots, close ups, medium close ups, tracking shots et al, and my eyes struggle with it and my brain grapples with it and my head hurts, a situation which doesn’t contribute to an optimum viewing experience. Especially with the annoying glasses.
But now we have Gravity.
As media become more about the individual, as we play more video-games, and as we use our phones to see the world more than our eyes, a film like Gravity could very well be a game-changer for how film makes us use the medium. It allows us to be an observer, but not in a fly-on-the-wall, Lars Von Trier kind of way, but in an ‘I’m actually here but I can’t control myself’ kind of way. It’s almost dreamlike – the transition from autonomous, free-floating observer to powerless participant (in the point-of-view sequences). The film has a very small amount of edits, and plays the first 13 minutes without a cut, allowing you to drink in the breathtaking spectacle of floating above the Earth. And in this long protracted shot (and others like it) the 3D work is barely noticeable as ‘3D work’, rather as a complementary tool employed to draw you further into the experience.
Having the camera operate more like the human eye draws attention to the contrivances of the film language that we have become used to and to the fact that 3D doesn’t really suit it. If cinema had developed along another path, maybe this is where it would have wound up. Here, or somewhere like it.
Cuaron’s style could be adopted as the new paradigm, appearing first as poor imitation before eventually settling down into just how it is. To quote James Cameron;
After Toy Story, there were 10 really bad CG movies because everybody thought the success of that film was CG and not great characters that were beautifully designed and heartwarming. Now, you’ve got people quickly converting movies from 2D to 3D… They’re expecting the same result, when in fact they will probably work against the adoption of 3D because they’ll be putting out an inferior product.
But where does this leave the cinema itself? Well, for all the ways that we may have reached the pinnacle, it also makes me sad that we may have reached the end. It’s a powerful vessel for storytelling, the only one offering a truly captive audience (no ad breaks, no phone, no social media, pee before the movie starts and if you’re a mite peckish and you forgot to get snacks, eat when it’s over), and allows films like 12 Years a Slave the opportunity to give you a good solid punch in the feelings in a way that it may not get to at home.
I have no conclusion, because one hasn’t been reached yet. As I’ve said before, strong storytelling is apparently migrating to television, but I’m still seeing great films in the cinema. How long that will last, I don’t know. Technique doesn’t have to be limited to the cinema (look at a show like Peep Show, using a PoV technique not a million miles away to induce identity and discomfort, and the cinematic stylings of Breaking Bad and company). And for all its splendour, Gravity has a very simple story, with simply drawn characters, its nearest contemporary probably Avatar rather than 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its characters are (Heaven forgive me) avatars themselves, with simple motivations, allowing the maximum amount of people to identify with them to experience the incredible spectacle.
And maybe that’s where it’s going. Maybe the cinema will be something that you’ll strap into, like Space Mountain, or so that you can resist the urge to run screaming from the theatre.
Artricle 