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Director Wim Wenders shows 3D works for drama, not just special effects

EVERY THING WILL BE FINE directed by Wim Wenders, written by Bjørn-Olaf Johannessen, with James Franco, Rachel McAdams, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marie-Josée Croze. A Mongrel Media release. 120 minutes. Opens Friday (December 11). See listings.


Wim Wenders sees things differently now.

In 2011, the veteran filmmaker shot a documentary, Pina, in digital 3D – the better to capture the staging and movements of Pina Bausch’s ballets. That film was a remarkable experience. So is the movie he brought to TIFF four years later, Every Thing Will Be Fine – a drama, shot in 3D, that’s the direct result of making Pina.

“The last days of shooting, we shot these portraits of all these dancers,” he says at the festival. “There was no dancing, just people in front of the camera – and that’s when I realized 3D had the potential to be an incredible storytelling tool. Because I’d never seen faces like that, and I’d never felt in the presence of somebody in a movie theatre like with these. 

“That’s when I thought, ‘Oh, wow, this is so powerful. This is not just for action and special effects and god knows what. This is a language to deal with reality and character.’”

He’s not exaggerating. This wasn’t a matter of just shooting with different cameras Wenders says he had to set aside most of his instincts.

“It was like starting from scratch,” he says, “learning how to frame a face and how to frame a landscape and how to frame a scene, and how to present it – how to take the audience there. As I was shooting, I felt all the people who were going to see it, as if they were next to me.”

There are moments in Every Thing Will Be Fine that are just James Franco’s face in tight close-up. (Franco plays Tomas, a Quebec writer who spends years struggling with the trauma of a car accident.) And Wenders is right: watching a simple human moment in 3D is a very different experience from watching it conventionally.

“These cameras see more than other cameras ever saw before,” he says. “It’s almost like their perception is quadrupled. They look into the soul of your actor, and they show every mistake and every [moment of] overacting. So as soon as the actor tries to overplay something, it’s already too much. He can only be.”

Was this just an experiment? Wenders says no. He’s looking to do future projects, both drama and documentary, in 3D – and he’s genuinely excited about the possibilities.

“It’s not just a way to raise ticket prices,” he says. “It’s not just an ingredient of films it is a whole new language – as important a change as when sound came up.”

See our review of Every Thing Will Be Fine here.

normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner

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