I remember the first Imax movie I ever saw. I would have been a student of about 18, a fan of European cinema and Toronto's many rep houses, when a friend insisted we had to haul ourselves all the way down to the city's windswept waterfront to see a short film about Canada's northern landscape. North of Superior was already a decade old, but the film was still regularly revived at Cinesphere, the six-storey screen at Ontario Place. Still, I had never heard of it and don't remember if I even knew what Imax was. I tagged along skeptically, only because my friend said it was not to be missed.
Today, I don't recall much about North of Superior except that it was magnificent, taking you soaring over cliffs, trees and water as though you were being treated to a helicopter ride. Perhaps as you get older, you become harder to impress; at any rate, I have never experienced that level of joyous physical transport in any 3-D movie or virtual-reality scenario that I've seen since. So, as the 2017 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival opens, one of the things I am most looking forward to seeing is North of Superior.
The screenings mark the renovation and reopening of Cinesphere, which was the first permanent Imax cinema when it launched in 1971; the film's director, Graeme Ferguson, was the co-inventor of the technology. But will this revival prove to be something more than a moment of cozy nostalgia?
The giant format, once so strongly associated with science centres and public museums it was perceived primarily as a medium for educational films, has become so ubiquitous at big-city multiplexes that its halo has slipped. It has grown up alongside 3-D as a way for producers and exhibitors to compete with all those other smaller screens (not to mention movie piracy) and right now, you can see Marvel's Inhumans, Wonder Woman and War for the Planet of the Apes in Imax at a theatre near you. If that's your association with the format, will you hurry down to the mothballed Ontario Place to see a 46-year-old, 18-minute Canadian short?
In truth, these smaller Imax screens can't match the beast at Cinesphere. I find that within minutes of the eye-popping opening sequences of action movies in Imax, my vision – or maybe it's my brain – adjusts to the experience and I am no longer particularly conscious of the effect. (I also seem to tune out 3-D as a movie progresses.) A few weeks after a screening, I often can't remember if I saw a box-office hit on an Imax or regular-sized screen. Imax is at risk of becoming the pumpkin-pie spice of cinema.
Certainly, it seemed a sad remark on the state of the format when the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington announced that it will close its Imax cinema at the end of this month to expand its food court. Nature filmmakers are protesting the closing and question the museum's assertion that ticket sales were down, but it seems unlikely the prestige venue will be saved at the last minute.
If something is going to stop this artistic slide, it probably won't be more screenings of North of Superior, much as I might relish them. To boost the Cinesphere relaunch, TIFF is also presenting a single screening of Christopher Nolan's new Second World War drama Dunkirk on Sunday, with him in attendance. Nolan's decision to shoot his movie, about the dramatic evacuation of the beach at Dunkirk in May, 1940, almost entirely in the 70mm format, may mark a much-needed renaissance for Imax: It offers a strong dramatic reason for the immersive experience, something higher up the artistic plane than leaping buildings in a single bound or blowing up cars.
Those of us who have never fought a war can't say with any authority, but watching Dunkirk certainly makes you feel this is what it's really like. The combination of immediacy – scenes where you feel trapped with the soldiers – and the grandeur of shots of the troops on the beach, the ships at sea and the planes in the sky is unbeatable. For those lucky enough to have snapped up one of the free tickets for the screening, Dunkirk at Cinesphere should be another experience to remember for a lifetime.
The screenings of North of Superior are part of TIFF Cinematheque's contribution to marking Canada 150 and the program includes several other welcome revivals. Remember I've Heard the Mermaids Singing from 1987? Patricia Rozema's lesbian take on the screwball comedy, about the amateur photographer Polly (played by a delightful Sheila McCarthy), is a classic underdog story with a gay romance that was provocative for the day. There's also Peter Mettler's Picture of Light, a 1994 quest to capture the aurora borealis on film, and Clement Virgo's drama Rude, a pioneering look at race and masculinity in the African-Canadian community made in 1995.
And, this is cheating, but through the magic of advance screenings, I can eagerly anticipate other TIFF-goers discovering two films in the Platform program – because I've already seen them. Reviews are still embargoed but look out for The Seen and Unseen, a hypnotic drama about a little Indonesian girl whose twin brother is dying, and the notable Australian western Sweet Country.
Kate Taylor