SCENES FROM A REVOLUTION
MY LOVE AFFAIR with cinema began, I suppose you could say, with ‘The End’. In 1979, as a deeply impressionable 15-year-old, I went to see Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War masterpiece Apocalypse Now, in glorious 70mm. From the opening explosion, soundtracked by The Doors’ epic lament, to “the horror” of its climax, I was totally absorbed.
It was a huge epiphany. For the first time, I realised the power of cinema: how it can give you such a completely visceral, emotional experience. For the two (or more) hours that you’re watching a movie, you’re taken out of the moment into a space that can be mind-expanding and health-giving. It’s almost medicinal.
Of course, the way films are made has changed hugely since Coppola toiled in the jungles of the Philippines during the late ’70s. But the ability of films to transport us into other peoples’ lives and live them experientially has hardly diminished. In fact, it’s only grown.
SINCE BEING CAST by Peter Jackson as Gollum for the trilogy, I’ve been lucky enough to experience some of cinema’s most impressive technological advances at first-hand. In 2000, as an actor and director of short films, I already appreciated what new technology could do for moviemaking. Avid had just replaced the physical splicing of film in the editing room, allowing you to cut together different versions of a scene and not be completely committed at that moment of cutting. But even greater changes were to come.
