Kodachrome

Illustration/Uday Mohite

The Royal Court Theatre, London, asks two vital questions when they analyse plays:

1. Why must this idea be explored through a play script, rather than a book, a poem or a film?

2. What do you, the playwright, want to say through this play? What is the theme you want to explore that must be told at this time?
I put this question to myself as I watched Kodachrome on Netflix - this is a film you think you've seen a hundred times - estranged father-son road trip ending in redemption. So, Ben (Ed Harris) is a crochety, wrinkled cancer patient, a lousy father but legendary photographer, who wants to travel to Kansas to develop some film rolls at a lab that is about to close, for one final exhibition.

Matt (Jason Sedekeis), the estranged down-on-his luck music-producer son is the unwilling driver. Cliché follows emotional cliche, except you realise that father and son differ technologically - digital is instant, Matt wants immediate results; he wants the trip with his father to end before it even begins. He'd rather use GPS navigation to find the fastest route. Film takes longer to develop. Ben would prefer to use an actual paper map and take the scenic route to reach the end result.

Matt asks Ben a simple question:
"Are you ever happy, Ben?" Ben's answer is profound:

"Happiness is bullshit… the great myth of the late 20th century. You think Picasso was happy? You think Hemingway was? Hendrix? They were miserable shits. No art worth a damn was created out of happiness. Ambition, narcissim, sex, rage - those are the engines that drive every great artist, every great man. A hole that can't be filled," Ben answers. Now the film has suddenly changed direction, from predictable to profound. A parable wrapped up in a potboiler.

Sometime later, Matt explodes:

"You'd have saved us all a lot of trouble if you'd shot digital, Ben."

Ben says, "Digital is shit. You can't beat the real thing. People are now taking more pictures than ever before, billions of them. But there are no slides, no prints, they're just data, electronic dust. Years from now, when they dig us up, there won't be any pictures to find. No record of who we were, how we lived."

Matt says pointedly, "What's the point of having an artefact if you've never seen it with your eyes?"

Ben asks his son, "You still talking about film?"

"You just never saw me, dad," Matt says.

"I see for a living, Matt, it's what I do."

This is no ordinary father-son road movie. This is one that explores the crossroads between analog and digital.

At the fag end of the film, Ben, surrounded by a bunch of young photogaphers, says, "We're all so frightened by time…the way it moves on, the way things disappear, that's why we're photographers. We're preservationists by nature. We take pictures to stop time, to commit moments to eternity. Human nature made tangible. About as good a definition of art as any I guess."

I wondered why the director had made this film, what was it really about. Why not write a novel about art, why not curate a coffee table book about great political photography. Why did this story need to be told at this time?

And, as the credits rolled, with the great Steve McCurry's images, the final lettering stated: Shot on 35 mm. It clicked that this is a film about film shot on film.

Matt's immediate world is made up of pixels, Ben's comprises grain.

The movie asks one of art's great questions: have we sacrificed rigour at the altar of compromise?

Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com