The IMax experience

From the moment you walk through IMAX’s glass doors, you will feel that the space age has finally come to Calcutta. The blue-lit interiors of the foyer, which is shared by the two screens of Cinemax, jettisons you into a world well beyond the usual film-viewing experience with its futuristic feel.

Of the three screens in the Mani Square multiplex, only one is an IMAX screen. It is designed to make you feel, if only for a few hours, that you are a part of the cinema you have previously only witnessed from afar.

WHAT YOU SEE

So much for form; what about content? The theatre has started off with two films — the made-for-IMAX International Space Station in Bengali and in English, which requires you to don 3D glasses a la Subhas Chakraborty; and 2D The Dark Knight, the first feature film to ever be partially shot using IMAX cameras. We opted to watch The Dark Knight, to better understand the IMAX advantage over traditional 35mm.

As you sink into your cosy seat (there is one row of even more indulgent — and more expensive — recliners) and stare at the blank behemoth towering before you, you expect to be taken places you have never been before.

WHAT YOU GET

If you buy your Batman tickets expecting a radically different film from the one you caught last year, you will be disappointed. The key difference is the much larger canvas the action sequences get. The outdoor shots are sweeping, Gotham is even more sinister than before and Batman’s task seems even more perilous. The colours burst, the darkness is even more total.

Unless you are an action junkie, however, the excitement of mind-boggling scale wears off fairly soon.

But this in no way detracts from director Christopher Nolan’s genius — not only did he break the mould in terms of story, he pioneered techniques used to merge 70mm IMAX film with 35mm. Most Hollywood films released in IMAX theatres are digitally remastered for the format. Nolan worked the other way around, making the IMAX portions of his product fit traditional screens.

And you have already had a taste of the IMAX experience, even if you didn’t know it. Imax film itself is much larger than normal celluloid, allowing it to capture far more information. Not only does this mean that it can fill the giant IMAX theatre screen, it also means that even when edited for the standard format, the images are far crisper. So some of the awe that you felt when you watched The Dark Knight at the run-of-the-mill multiplex the first time is thanks to the IMAX technology employed in the making of it.

What suffers is the sound. Apparently, the camera is so noisy that dialogue for scenes shot on IMAX had to be dubbed. We don’t know if that was responsible for significant portion of dialogue sounding muffled — including Commissioner Gordon’s stirring closing monologue — which was a problem in multiplex viewing as well.

We would like to wait and see some films premiere on IMAX to get a better feel of what it is really about. If you had seen The Dark Knight on IMAX before seeing it in a multiplex, you may have felt that the canvas had been cramped. But viewed the other way around, you are only left feeling that is impossible to improve upon perfection.