We headed out this morning for the sold-out 11:00 AM screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, armed with tickets secured three weeks in advance. The drive out to Langley was remarkably smooth, taking an easy half hour each way.
The entire motivation for making the trek was the rare technological indulgence of 70mm film projection. Langley hosts one of only nine venues in all of Canada capable of running physical 70mm celluloid. And it's one of a mere 41 in the whole world that is screening it. For the inner statistics geek, the mechanical scale alone is impressive: at 5-perf standard projection speed, film whips through the gate at roughly 112.5 feet per minute. Over a nearly three-hour running time, that translates to approximately 18,000 to 20,000 feet of heavy ribbon, an astonishing three linear miles of physical polyester rattling past the lamp.
The immense scale and uncompressed audio certainly dominated the room, though being accustomed to our 55-inch OLED panel at home spoils conventional projection. Throughout the darker scenes, one could not help wishing for absolute, self-lit black levels rather than the typical hazy grey inherent to massive xenon bulbs. Cranked to that cinematic volume, our home Onkyo setup would undoubtedly incite an immediate strata revolt on Carnarvon Street.
A few peculiar artistic liberties stood out. Polyphemus was gifted a horizontal ocular slit, an anatomical trait belonging strictly to grazing prey animals, making the legendary brute resemble an oversized, irritated goat scanning the Mediterranean coast. On the other hand, staging the final bow-stringing contest as an agonizing physical struggle of aging, failing muscle, rather than an effortless demigod triumph, added genuine dramatic weight.
While modern digital contrast has fundamentally altered our visual expectations, experiencing three miles of roaring celluloid in a packed cinema remains an exceptional mechanical spectacle. I am very glad we made the trip to see it in true 70mm.