Presented by Keanu Reeves, Side By Side is an unapologetically niche (read: geeky) documentary about the decline of celluloid film and the reinvention of filmmaking thanks to the impact of digital cameras. Combining technical information about pixels, grain, and depth and richness of film with input from Hollywood heavy-hitters, Reeves allows his interviewees to passionately espouse why they’re all for the new technology – or why they’re against it.
The interviews are a delight, and while it’s no surprise that James Cameron and George Lucas champion advancing technology, Danny Boyle, Lena Dunham, and the Wachowskis prove the most giddily geeky supporters of digital film as a democratic art form that can transcend low budgets, a lack of formal training and previous limits on ambition and vision. An important point is also made about the difficulty of archiving celluloid film, and the possibility of losing so much of cinema’s history because of its physical fragility.
However, the dissenters are vocal too, expressing the negative psychological impacts of the rapid and less thoughtful editing process of digital film. Though only touched upon, intriguing points are raised by Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. about how the ability to digitally shoot huge amounts of footage without stopping affects the actors’ experience on set – a change neither look upon favourably.
Unfortunately there are notable omissions, including celluloid champions Spielberg, Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson. And the title remains a bit of a misnomer, as the two art-forms as never really presented as equal running mates. The film also fails to do the most obvious and potentially revealing eponymous test: shooting a scene using both methods and creating a split-screen comparison.