With Varanasi, Rajamouli Positions Indian Cinema on a Global IMAX Stage for the First Time;
For decades, aspect ratio was treated like a technical footnote a simple choice between widescreen or something close to television. But today, frame shape has become one of the most powerful storytelling tools in cinema. With filmmakers across the world returning to large-format film, native IMAX capture, and VistaVision, the audience is experiencing movies not just as visuals but as physical spaces.
Rajamouli’s upcoming film Varanasi shot and presented in true IMAX 1.43:1, a first for Indian cinema arrives at the center of this global shift. The choice is not merely technological; it defines the emotional scale of the narrative. This article explores how formats like IMAX, VistaVision, 65mm and anamorphic reshape the way we feel films today.
IMAX: An Engineered Environment for Total Immersion
what the IMAX 1.43:1 format? it isn’t just a bigger screen; it is an entire visual ecosystem engineered for immersion. Everything the oversized film frame, custom large-format cameras, dual-projector or laser systems, floor-to-ceiling curved screens, seating geometry, and precision multi‑channel sound is designed to engulf the viewer’s field of vision.
The goal is simple: remove the sensation of “watching a movie” and replace it with the sensation of being inside it.
This is why true 1.43:1 IMAX carries such emotional force. The towering vertical real estate gives monumental energy to faces, crowds, temples, rituals and landscapes. It is an aspect ratio built for awe the perfect language for a film like Varanasi, where spiritual geography, human density and architectural scale are core to the storytelling.
VistaVision: The Horizontal Negative Returns
Before digital large format, VistaVision pioneers ran 35mm film horizontally, creating a much larger negative area with finer grain and greater detail. Today, this format is experiencing a major revival.
– The Brutalist used 8‑perf VistaVision to stunning effect, winning the Oscar for Best Cinematography.
– Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025) returns to VistaVision for its grand, richly textured aesthetic.
– Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia uses VistaVision not for vistas but for psychological intensity and discomfort.
– Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights blends 35mm and VistaVision for a turbulent, emotional gothic landscape.
VistaVision provides a unique blend of detail, grain, depth and intimacy a middle ground between 35mm nostalgia and 65mm spectacle.
65mm Film: The Gold Standard of Image Capture
The Two Major 65mm Formats (Updated for 2024–2025)
Large-format 65mm film now sits at the center of global prestige cinematography, and its two primary formats each offer a distinct visual language.
A. 5-Perf 65mm (Todd-AO / Panavision System 65)
Native Aspect Ratio: 2.20:1
Recent Uses:
• The Smashing Machine (2024–2025) climactic sequences shot on 65mm
• Sinners (2025) selected Ultra Panavision 70 sequences (2.76:1 derived from 65mm)
• The Hateful Eight (Ultra Panavision revival) still influences current LF stylists
• One Battle After Another (2025, Paul Thomas Anderson) incorporates 65mm + VistaVision
(Traditionally: Lawrence of Arabia, Dunkirk non-IMAX scenes)*
Look & Feel:
Benefits of 65mm film cinematography are Smooth, creamy, richly detailed, with a painterly roll-off and majestic scale.
5-perf 65mm is often used for emotional grandeur rather than spectacle a format that enlarges human presence without overwhelming the frame.
B. 15-Perf 65mm (IMAX 65mm Film)
Native Aspect Ratio: 1.43:1
Recent Uses:
• Oppenheimer (2023) nearly half the film shot in IMAX 65mm
• Sinners (2025) supernatural/vampire sequences in full-height IMAX 1.43
• The Odyssey (2026, Christopher Nolan) first film shot entirely on IMAX 65mm
• Interstellar, Tenet foundational modern IMAX work
Look & Feel:
Explosive clarity
Zero visible grain
Epic verticality
Unmatched depth, presence, and tactile realism
IMAX 65mm doesn’t just show a scene it places the audience inside it. It’s the closest cinema has come to a fully immersive visual language.
Why This Matters for Varanasi
Rajamouli choosing true IMAX 65mm / 1.43:1 positions Varanasi within the same global league as the most ambitious visual epics being made today. It signals a once-in-a-generation leap not just for Indian filmmaking, but for how Indian audiences will experience cinematic scale, space, and spiritual architecture on screen
Large-format film has become the defining canvas of prestige cinema. The last two years have seen a resurgence of pure 65mm capture:
– Ryan Coogler’s Sinners mixes 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision 70 with 1.43:1 IMAX 65mm, using aspect ratio changes as a narrative device the world of vampires opens up vertically into IMAX.
– Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey is the first feature shot entirely on IMAX 65mm film.
– Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine escalates from VHS to 16mm to 65mm as the character’s life becomes mythic.
These films use gauge not just for clarity, but for emotional escalation. The larger the capture format, the more dramatically the “circle of confusion” expands, which means the way objects fall in and out of focus becomes more pronounced and more emotionally expressive. In simple terms, when a tiny point in an image is enlarged to the point where it no longer appears as a precise dot but becomes a small circle, that circle is the Circle of Confusion. On formats like 65mm and IMAX 65mm, this circle becomes naturally larger, creating smoother transitions between sharp and soft areas. Backgrounds don’t simply blur they melt into depth, forming rich, creamy planes that feel almost three-dimensional. Focus pulls become emotional cues rather than technical actions, and even a slight shift in distance can change the meaning of a shot.
This behaviour ties directly into depth of field, which is simply the range in which objects appear acceptably sharp. Larger formats inherently produce shallower depth of field, allowing the cinematographer to isolate a subject with extraordinary precision. Even a small movement forward or backward on 65mm can push a character in or out of an ultra-thin focus plane, making portraits, close-ups, and dramatic beats feel more intimate and vulnerable. This optical behaviour also enhances subject separation how clearly the subject “pops” from the background. On large formats, the subject remains tack-sharp while the world behind them dissolves more quickly, giving the image a sculpted, dimensional quality.
And when all of this is projected on the massive surface of an IMAX screen, the effect multiplies. The viewer isn’t simply observing depth of field they are immersed inside it. The scale of the screen, the clarity of the gauge, and the behaviour of focus combine to create an emotional gravity that smaller formats and smaller theatres simply can’t replicate. Large-format cinematography demands a large canvas because its power doesn’t lie only in detail, but in the way it sculpts space, scale and presence around the audience, making the cinema itself feel like a living, breathing extension of the story
Aspect Ratios: A Comparisions
1.43:1 vs 1.90:1 vs 2.39:1
When you compare 1.43:1, 1.90:1 and 2.39:1, you’re really comparing three different ways of placing the audience inside the story three psychological experiences of scale. 1.43:1 (true IMAX) is the most immersive and vertically dominant; it fills the viewer’s field of vision and makes faces, temples, buildings and crowds feel almost physically present. This is why films shot on IMAX 65mm, such as Oppenheimer, Sinners and Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey, achieve such overwhelming emotional impact. 1.90:1 (digital IMAX) sits in the middle taller than standard widescreen but wide enough to feel “blockbuster.” It’s ideal for action, large-scale environments, and variable-ratio storytelling where scenes can expand in height without reaching the cathedral-like scale of 1.43. 2.39:1 scope is the classic anamorphic canvas wide, graphic, horizontal perfect for mythic silhouettes, landscapes, deserts, and deliberate, painterly compositions. It encourages the audience to read the frame left to right, rather than fall vertically into it.
These three formats shape audience perception in distinct ways:
1.43:1 is immersive, towering, and monumental a format that creates true physical presence, especially in scenes of spiritual intensity, architecture or human density.
1.90:1 is expansive but controlled, balancing vertical openness with cinematic width.
2.39:1 is horizontal, mythic and designed for visual choreography and epic scale.
In practice, 1.43:1 feels like being there,
1.90:1 feels big but balanced,
and 2.39:1 feels like a composed painting.
These aren’t just ratios they’re three different psychologies of immersion that filmmakers are now mixing within the same film to control emotion, rhythm and scale with increasing precision.
The Global Trend: Format As Authorship
Across the world, filmmakers are once again treating format as an act of authorship a deliberate creative signature that shapes how their stories are felt. VistaVision has returned for the emotional texture and sculpted detail of its horizontal negative. 65mm and IMAX 65mm are being used for monumental physical immersion, where scale becomes a character in itself. Anamorphic 2.39 remains the language of mythic storytelling, with its sweeping horizontality and graphic elegance. And digital large format has established a clean, modern aesthetic built on depth, presence, and ultra-smooth spatial rendering.
Rajamouli’s Varanasi enters this global arena by embracing true IMAX 1.43:1, not as a marketing hook but as a narrative philosophy a choice that dictates how audiences will emotionally inhabit the film
Cinema is changing. Audiences today respond not just to story and performance, but to scale, presence, and immersion. The frame has become a narrative tool a space that shapes atmosphere, psychology, and even metaphysics. Whether it’s the towering vertical divinity of IMAX 1.43, the finely textured expanse of VistaVision, the creamy grandeur of 65mm, or the mythic sweep of anamorphic widescreen, each format tells a different emotional truth. Varanasi positions Indian cinema inside this global evolution, becoming the country’s first true IMAX-native epic and joining the league of filmmakers who use format not as a technical decision, but as storytelling itself.
And yet, at the heart of this achievement lies a quiet irony. India is finally stepping into native IMAX filmmaking, but the country still lacks enough true 1.43:1 IMAX theatres to honour that creative ambition. Most “IMAX” screens here are digital 1.90:1 multiplex conversions taller than standard cinemas, yes, but nowhere near the cathedral-like immersion these films are designed for. It creates a cultural gap where our filmmakers are pushing the boundaries of craft, format, and scale more boldly than ever before, while our exhibition infrastructure lags behind.
Varanasi may indeed be India’s first true IMAX-native epic but unless our theatres evolve with the same courage as our filmmakers, audiences will experience only a fraction of what the format can truly deliver. The hope is that Rajamouli’s leap forward doesn’t just change how India shoots films, but also how India shows them.
Read More