Nolan's 70mm question

I wake up from my slumber and turn on my toaster. To do what you ask? To watch Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, of course. We are all familiar with such memes that keep asking the question: How did Nolan intend it to be seen? These debates have a new height with the release of Odyssey and the apparent intended format of viewing being the IMAX 70mm screen, of which there are exactly zero in India. Even in the US, there aren't many of them. That begs the question: what should be the fundamental function of art? Should it be accessible, or should it use the best technological affordances known to humans at that point in time? Because if you don't use the affordances, that's limiting human creativity—ethically speaking, we have to mention this when we're talking about everything in the age of AI. On the other side, there's also the question of access: who is your intended audience, who should experience it, who should not, and so on.

Now, this argument about experiencing art could have been slightly neglected had Nolan not come to India for extensive promotions (or he just wanted to have Bun-muska, who knows!). If your audience and promotion zone relies on a particular market, should you still say 70mm is the best format, given that there are no 70mm theatres in India? Is that elitism, or is that an artist using the finest tools to hone his craft?

My contention is both. It's elitist, and it's also an artist using the tools to hone the craft. Why? Because, everybody should have the capacity to view and understand art in a certain sense. But at the same time, the maker of the art is not at liberty to decide which infrastructure is elite and which isn't. Many places still don't have a theatre or adequate shows. Where does our boundary for elitism begin and democratisation end? Why can't I watch a movie on a mobile phone? You'd say, no, the experience of theatricality and all that—because you assume theater as infrastructure is available at your disposal. But you perhaps wouldn’t say the same about VR games.

But here's why I want to shift the lens: I bring a distinct perspective from being a gamer. Video games as forms of art, as methods of narrative production, have always depended on graphics cards and computational architecture to run at optimal performance. Growing up as aspiring gamers in India, we never had those graphics cards—you needed money, and even upper-middle-class parents wouldn't spend that just for entertainment! They were considered viruses only. So my search back then was: what video games can I play without a graphics card? Or by lowering the settings? Because my computer either doesn't have one or it's too old.

The latest game has ray-tracing, so you see Spider-Man's reflections bounce off walls, but I can't get that because my card isn't powerful enough. Does that mean I don't play the game? No—I play it to the ability I can, because I know there are access barriers. But that doesn't mean developers shouldn't invest in that technology. The conversation holds for video games because it can be dialled down. Whether dialling down means the same thing as cropping the edges of an IMAX 70mm screen is something we should consider—along with other art forms that also grapple with this infrastructural dialling down. Video games are one of the most viable examples.

It comes up in music too. Get Spotify Premium, you hear better quality—but nobody outrages that they can't hear 50 trombones on a lower tier. We don't outrage that musicians use instruments we can't fully hear on non-premium subscriptions, but we do ask why Nolan used 70mm when those theatres don't exist. That's why my whole argument is to rethink infrastructure when we look at access, enjoyment, and the politics of art.

So, it comes down to awareness: am I aware this is cropped? Is that playing at the back of my head? If it is, and if you think it matters, then it probably does. If you don't think it matters, then it doesn't.