For centuries, patrons have commissioned art to serve solely as a status symbol. In Trecento Italy, the accepted practice was to request paintings made of the richest substances. Lapis lazuli was common in the works of Cimabue’s coevals, as its value rested in its monetary worth before its beauty. This approach tapered off as the Renaissance bloomed and aesthetic perfection became artists’ primary pursuit. Since the film industry’s mass shift from analog imagemaking to digital, the question of whether or not celluloid is just ‘lapis’ has loomed over directors’ heads. At the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, film manufacturer Kodak announced that 34 projects in competition were shot on celluloid, almost doubling Cannes’ 2021 slate. Not only are the Hollywood auteur heavy-hitters like Paul Thomas Anderson and Christopher Nolan remaining steadfast in exclusively shooting on film, but many filmmakers who experimented with digital at its advent are now returning to analog. For example, Sean Baker, who gained notoriety with his shot-on-iPhone Sundance darling Tangerine, has photographed every subsequent project on film. Is this turn back to celluloid made out of mere sentimentality, or is there something beyond its anachronism that captures an otherwise lost truth in our world? 

It is first necessary to gauge digital filmmaking’s range as an artistic tool. The scientific perfection of digital cinematography can serve a film’s poesis, perhaps most potently when expressing one’s inability to connect with their surroundings in a technology-driven society. A standout example in popular culture is from one of Hollywood’s earliest champions of digital, director David Fincher, and his 2010 drama The Social Network. The format reinforces Mark Zuckerberg’s depiction as a Richard III-type figure: Mark is constantly perceived as lacking humanity and is estranged by many for this reason, so he machinizes his inner nature to fill the social role he believes will bring the most success. The ambiguity of this estrangement’s source (self, society, or a mixture of both) is made clearer by the film’s visual language. He is often alone in the frame, with the images’ shallow depths of field as reminders of his isolation. In the climactic argument scene between Mark and his former business partner Eduardo, the close-up of Eduardo is framed with Mark out-of-focus in the foreground, suggesting a disconnect between the two. They are tuned to different frequencies. When we cut back to Mark, we expect to see Eduardo out-of-focus in the foreground as well—a traditional reverse-shot. But Eduardo is nowhere to be found in the frame. In Mark’s vision of the world, his friendship with Eduardo is not a consideration. As though looking through his eyes, the camera registers the world as pixels. No matter how much humanity Mark tries to stow away, and no matter how hard his peers try to connect with him, Mark (and the audience) will only ever see his surroundings as the potentiality of technology. They are pawns on his digital chessboard, a chance for a click and a buck, the fuel for his success. Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth’s work on the film reaffirms that regardless of its impetus, it is ultimately Mark’s choice to reject authentic human connection in favor of the superficial gratification of society at large.

Take Anatomy of a Fall as another example. At its core, the film is about the futility of human attempts to reach an objective truth. The very look of the film is a deceit that produces a filmic image on a digital camera. The aberration surrounding the edges of the warm tones, the bright Technicolor-esque reds and blues, and the manufactured grain all emulate celluloid, but still clearly read as nothing more than an imitation. Filmmakers who want the celluloid look but can afford to shoot on film often still opt for digital emulation instead, using programs to add filmic grain and color to footage captured digitally. This usually communicates a laziness on the filmmaker’s part, who desires an aesthetic but lacks the discipline to achieve it truthfully. However, Anatomy’s look is justified by its artistic purpose. It constantly reminds us that no technology, no emulation can capture the breadth of an organic experience such as shooting on film. It is impossible to achieve a scientifically ‘correct’ look for a film, just as the film’s trial fails to uncover an undeniable verdict. In the same way, neither interrogation techniques nor expertise bring the judge to a conclusion on Sandra’s innocence. In the end, the decision rests on the testimony of her visually impaired son, and what he testifies is based solely on his personal instinct.

The film’s visual language further subverts its own “attempt” at objectivity. The scene in which Sandra explains her innocence to her lawyer for the first time is mostly filmed from a cold distance that doesn't promote sympathy. The audience is invited to distrust Sandra. This opacity is what director Justine Triet mines for dramatic tension the entire runtime. But because Triet wants to keep us curious, even in intimate moments with Sandra (the climax being her explosive argument flashback) the camera remains cool, with steady zooms and dolly work. Sandra’s passion, like Beckert’s testimony in M, can be read as either proof or disproof of her culpability. Zoom work often has the effect of alienating the viewer from the scenario, as it is the only camera movement the human body cannot replicate. Triet explicitly denies the audience access to Sandra’s interior in an apt, yet more traditional way. But the camera’s relationship with Daniel is a subtle revolutionary cry in the vérité tradition. In rendering moments of Daniel’s distress, the camera makes subtle, jittery zooms. What would normally be perceived as a technical fault is repurposed as a means of imbuing feeling into the camera's perspective. The lens is no longer indifferent—Triet pulls the strings so that the audience resonates deeply with Daniel's grief and confusion. Whereas the controlled zoom work associated with Sandra places the audience at an emotional distance from her, Daniel's stilted zooms put the audience in the shoes of someone who wants to put a comforting hand on his fragile shoulder, but is unsure of whether or not it will break him. We are made to understand Daniel personally, so it doesn't matter whether or not his verdict is the objective truth. Truth is invention suspended. And it is incumbent upon truth's inventor to create ultimately from a place of humanity. Invention services humanity, not the inverse.

The claim many use to support celluloid filmmaking is that a digital image lacks ‘texture’. But how can something visual be perceived as tactile? I find myself hung up on the word ‘texture’. It doesn’t just refer to film grain, which can be digitally manufactured. It must be something that is felt. Art’s pulse rests in the relationship between the artist and the audience, which passes through the aptly named ‘medium’. This pulse is an emotional memory. Images act on the audience in the way memories do, as art is but a memory that can be collectively experienced. If cinema is in essence a memory of light, then digital filmmaking strips the memory of its naturalness. A digital image is immortal and, thus, inhuman. Celluloid fogs over time as a memory does, and details in the image may be lost. But beyond (or perhaps because of) the inexactness, an energy is preserved that digital will always fail to capture. Digital is a translation that loses the original glimmers in a moment; celluloid is a pure record of light that trades exactitude for the ineffable. This is not to say that digital lacks artistic value—evidently I believe the contrary. At its purest, though, digital communicates something about a fundamental disconnect in modern society, whereas watching a film on celluloid today nourishes the audience’s desire for connection with the film and filmmaker. 

So what happens when our hyper-industrialized world is captured on an organic medium like film? The effect is dissonant; relative to cinema’s brief history, it feels comparable to Renaissance humanism. Just as Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus renders the excision of classical art as a process which, when stuffed into the present, reveals the dysfunction of modernity, Sean Baker’s Anora co-opts a fairy tale structure to expose the impossibility of a believable Cinderella story in the present day. Baker knows it may feel strange watching characters use iPhones or vapes in 35mm, but he leans into it. He knows it may feel clumsy to capture reality on celluloid in the current cinematic climate, so he hinges his cinematic eye on the fantastical story encasing the movie. He makes us aware of the proscenium, of the impossibility of the farce being fully genuine, by framing most of Ivan and Ani’s honeymooning with dreamy Felliniesque dolly work (a cue from the Italian director’s seminal Nights of Cabiria). The zenith of their bliss is matched by a drone shot flying away from the couple and their mansion, a decision more characteristic of a reality show than an independent film. However, like in reality shows, the perceived joy is merely a false front for the shallowness of their relationship. Ivan and his promise of a better life advance on Ani torrentially, disappearing as quick as they arrived. 

Only after the love has dried up can Baker pull back the curtain at the end of Anora, revealing the devastating, authentic repercussions left behind by the too-good-to-be-true first half (as a friend and filmmaker Aidan Forte put it, “the reality of our fantasies”). In the film’s ultimate long-take, after Ivan’s superficiality is evident and the wedding is annulled, Ani’s confused advances on Igor display her grasping for a happy ending. The camera dollies forward slowly, a visual echo recalling many shots of Ani and Ivan during their relationship. In repeating this movement, Baker translates Ani’s own memories of Ivan into visual language. She attempts to manufacture intimacy with Igor—the only male figure in the film who consistently treats her with unconditional dignity—but her mind is on Ivan. When Igor finally gives in, though, his response is more firm than romantic. The intimacy becomes real and wakes her from her daydream. For the first time in the film, her walls collapse. She weeps for her naivete, for Ivan’s cruelty, and for the future that so narrowly evaded her. Just as she is confronted with bare reality, the audience is for the first time confronted with her naked soul. Baker isn’t convincing us to buy the plot’s believability; what supersedes this in effect is Ani’s emotional authenticity. What is felt in the film is far more believable than what is seen, that being the clash between disillusionment and hope surrounding love and personal autonomy. The use of 35mm suggests an inherent authenticity beneath its fairy tale veil that would be lost were it shot on digital.

Shooting on film emboldens the artistic tradition at the foundation of cinema. It preserves techniques and attitudes that would otherwise be snowed over by the avalanche of modern content, keeping the inspirations of the past alive and in conversation with the present. But more importantly, celluloid situates the filmmaker within this tradition by way of the discipline and intention it requires. To capture authenticity on any camera requires athleticism, divination, and luck; but capturing it on a finite amount of film like the Maysles or Herzog requires exponentially greater discipline in decision-making. Celluloid has never been more economic or ergonomic than digital—but cinema has never been an economic or ergonomic art form. It is bold and intrusive. It does not care about any boundary but the frame. Watching a constructed narrative is supposed to capture the essence of truth more than its semblance. Technical improvements have been made in digital filmmaking to prevent human error. The unintended loss was the discipline created by the fear of human error. The care that must be placed into loading the camera, capturing the image within celluloid’s limitations, and developing the film demands the filmmaker understands the essence they desire to capture. 

Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond, tells the story of a gambler opening a brothel in a 1902 boomtown and the highs and lows that follow. Because he aimed to create a look evocative of McCabe’s time period, Zsigmond was able to turn celluloid’s limitations into strengths. Film exposed to light after capturing an image is guaranteed to fog, irreparably obscuring the initial image. Undergoing a process called ‘film flashing’, each image was exposed to precisely even amounts of light after filming and before developing. This produced a subtle fade in each image reminiscent of a faded 19th century photograph. A controlled ‘accident’ like film flashing can only be authentically produced on celluloid, a medium susceptible to error. Like its images, the film on the whole is obsessed with opacity; Altman the gambler-director knows when to conceal his hand. The faceless figure we follow through the entire opening sequence isn’t revealed to be the eponymous John McCabe until a full two minutes have passed. A thick wood’s branches stand between us and him, and all we have to judge this figure by is his status, denoted by his large fur coat. At the very end of the film, when McCabe is shot, he recedes into the snow whilst the town celebrates an extinguished fire in the chapel. The wind blows and the blizzard swallows him. The final shot we see of McCabe is a long zoom from a great distance—as he fills the frame, we are denied his features by the pairing of the foggy image and the snow that covers his face. He dies a death marked by conceit, as it is a gambler’s bluff that had put a contract on his head in the first place.

In art, technical advancement is only necessary in areas that service the pursuit of essence—and oftentimes, clarity can be the enemy of truth. Parabolic opacity is what has allowed Kafka’s writing to persist for over a century, what has made the Bible timeless. It is the distillation of a complex idea into the simplest possible expression. To make art opaque is not to make it incomprehensible; it is to fill it with the rich air that passes through our soul each time something moves us in our lives. Like the wind, these memories remain invisibly present in us. They pique our curiosity (a question is far more alive than an answer). Celluloid’s texture gives shape to the spirit of memory. Digital filmmaking is a completely viable artistic path but often fails to capture the nuances of memory one cannot perceive. It gives a crystalline product at the expense of the scrappy artistic process. A celluloid film supports the emotional reality of the world it presents in its very marrow because it ensures the imagemaking process is decidedly organic and tactile. It is a tangible account of the energy transferred among the artist, the audience, and the subject, in a medium where feeling always trumps fact. And we, the audience, are to receive it so, to think only after we have felt. In this way, Daniel is the only capable judge in Anatomy of a Fall. Like an audience in a dark theater, he is only able to see only enough light to situate himself, but this allows him to let feeling carry him along the tenebrous path to truth.