The New York Film Festival generally doesn’t concern itself with playing the awards season/world premiere game in the same way that the rest of their fall festival colleagues might, but nonetheless the titles they are exclusively premiering this year are impressive, with Ava DuVernay‘s “The 13th,” James Gray‘s “The Lost City Of Z,” and Mike Mills‘ “20th Century Women” among them. Now, they’ve landed another high profile title.
Organizers have announced that Ang Lee‘s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” will receive its World Premiere at the New York Film Festival, and it will have a high tech special touch. The drama about a young Iraq war hero who is part of a victory tour upon returning home has been shot in 3D at 120 frames-per-second, requiring fancy new projectors to show the movie as Lee intended (most cinemas don’t have the capability). And the director insists the format is fitting for the story.
“I thought Billy’s journey, which is both intimate and epic, and told almost entirely from his point of view, lent itself particularly well to the emotion and intensity that this new approach fosters,” Lee said in a statement via The New York Times. And apparently, it’s the battle sequences in the film that benefit most from the sharper image delivered at 120 fps which theoretically gives a better sense of realism than a picture at 24 fps.
Frankly, none of this really matters because at the end of the day, it will be the story that counts and no amount of razzle dazzle can make up for a narrative that doesn’t work.
The New York Film Festival runs from September 30th to October 16th. “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” opens on November 11th.