Odyssey: the photograph of a film that almost no one can really see.

There's something paradoxical about the photographic choice in Christopher Nolan's new film, Odyssey. The director, along with cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, decided to push his obsession with film and the large image even further: for the first time, a narrative feature film was shot entirely with IMAX cameras on 65mm negative, in the 15-perf format, intended to produce 70mm prints for IMAX screening. It's a choice that has clear implications for the image. The large IMAX frame, with its 1.43:1 aspect ratio, allows for a much more vertical vision than traditional widescreen film formats. It's not simply a question of greater definition: it changes the amount of space that can fit into the frame, the relationship between bodies and the landscape, the perception of architecture and, above all, that of the sky. In a film that tells a mythological journey across the sea, islands, and lands of ancient Greece, this verticality becomes a precise expressive choice.

The most curious thing, however, comes when you leave the set and enter the theater. Because the version for which Odyssey was conceived is also a version that very few audiences will be able to see in its most specific form: the IMAX 70mm projection on film. In fact, there are only 41 theaters worldwide capable of showing the film in its original IMAX 70mm format. This is a surprisingly small number for a blockbuster destined to be seen by millions. The vast majority of audiences will therefore see Odyssey in a version other than the IMAX 70mm projection on film: in digital IMAX, in traditional 70mm, or in other theatrical formats. These versions may retain a very significant part of the original image's characteristics, but they do not necessarily provide the same combination of medium, aspect ratio, and projection mode as the IMAX 70mm print.

And it is here that the choice of film becomes almost a provocation. Nolan invests enormous resources in constructing a physical, analog, gigantic, and technically complex image, knowing that the majority of audiences will not have access to IMAX 70mm projection on film. In Italy, for example, there are no theaters equipped with IMAX 70mm projectors. The question, then, is not simply whether 70mm is better than digital, but a more interesting one: what's the point of photographing a film in a format that very few viewers can see in its most extreme form? Perhaps this is precisely the crux of Nolan's poetics. In an age where cinema can be reproduced anywhere and on any screen, Odissea asserts the opposite idea: the cinematic image is not just a file, but something also created to be projected, on an enormous surface, via a beam of light that physically passes through a film. The result is a fascinating contradiction. Odissea is a film designed for the mass audience that, in its most specific and spectacular photographic form, has become an experience for very few.

A choice perhaps anachronistic, certainly expensive, but also radically cinematic: Nolan seems to tell us that, precisely because cinema is becoming increasingly accessible, it is worth remembering how rare it still can be.