The Third Dimension
It would be a well-educated guess to suppose that 3-D cinema will never yield an artistic masterpiece. That may not be enough to stop it becoming the dominant format in near-future years. Now that Avatar has broken every money record in film history, we should brace ourselves for the 3-D revolution. Coming to a distopia near you, old lookers will be remastered in three dimensions (Jurassic Park, Terminator II, Return of the King, etc), children will be bored to tears at anything flat shown on television, 2-D will become the reserve of art house, eventually warenting its own category at the Oscars, and any director working in two dimensions may have to do so under the accusation of “trying to make a point”. Films like 8½, The Pianist and 12 Angry Men will not be remastered, and perhaps that tells us something about the integrity preserved within the traditional format.
When Steven Spielberg made Schindler’s List, a little girl in a red coat symbolised the unobserved tragedy of the Holocaust. It remains an iconic moment in cinema, and its effect is almost inexplicable. Even without its wider meaning, there is something profound in that redness moving through the monochrome world; a profundity made greater by the distance that black and white cinema forces between an audience and the reality of history. With a single dash of colour Spielberg reminds us that this is fiction and yet, this is not fiction. When 2-D is as ancient as black and white, perhaps it will be the use of a three-dimensional object which adds meaning to an otherwise two-dimensional historical drama. The effect in Schindler’s List may not then be so moving, however, particularly when the little girl’s appearance will be anticipated by an on-screen prompt: PUT ON YOUR 3-D GLASSES NOW.
Paul Sweeten is reading for an MSt in Creative Writing at Kellogg College, Oxford.
