Living in the Age of Airplanes takes you on a journey across seven continents at the IMAX Telus Theater
Flying across the Atlantic has become banal. Rather than it being seven hours of pondering the miracle of racing across the globe at high speed in a metal container thousands of feet in the air, the act of flying is now all about thinking on how to spend the next seven hours.
In Living in the Age of Airplanes, the banality that comes along with the idea of air travel is tossed out the window as the audience is invited to take an awe-inspiring journey filmed in 18 different countries and seven continents.
Directed by Brian J. Terwilliger, narrated by Harrison Ford and distributed by National Geographic, this documentary illustrates a comprehensive evolution of the world since the invention of the airplane and how the ability to hop across continents has sparked immense change in the course of human history.
Incredible cinematography meets a booming and singular soundtrack, working together to capture all your senses as you become engrossed in the film. Featuring jaw-dropping camera work, there are no wasted or “filler” shots and every single frame is perfectly composed.
The soundtrack matches perfectly with the visuals, complementing the narration. Using a combination of melodies, the symphony perfectly matches with the visuals.
On the giant IMAX screen, you feel as if though you were in flight, soaring above and through the clouds, over forests and deserts and oceans. You can feel like you’re flying without ever leaving your theater seat.
The movie explores aviation in five steps. First, it explores life before airplanes connected the world. Airplanes allow you to zoom across the globe and back for a vacation, but before aviation trips were often one-way affairs. For 200,000 years, the fastest travel speed of humans was attained by a brisk walk, sprinting or horse-riding. The wheel, the boat, the steam engine and cars all made us move faster. And then came flight.
“In a single century, aviation went from impossible to nearly perfected,” said Ford in his narration.
The movie then goes into how airport gates function as portals to the planet, how aviation redefined the notion of a location being remote, how airplanes bring the world to us and how it offers us a new perspective on our home planet.
The documentary explores the more subtle ways that aviation changed the course of history. Not only did it facilitate human travel, but goods are now shipped worldwide. Roses that are grown and picked in Kenya are flown to Amsterdam, and in under 24 hours are shipped internationally. It takes three days for them to end up decorating a dining table in Alaska. This internationalization of goods and products is only made possible through flight.
The film is as informative as it is entertaining. As passengers, we are familiar with the mobility aspect of planes: cramped space, long waiting times and little sleep. In this documentary, we are able to put those frustrations aside and rethink of how aviation changed our societal realities. This film is a must-see for the documentary fan or anyone interested in the wonders of flight and the technology that has made it happen.
Tickets for Living in the Age of Airplanes are $12 at the IMAX Telus Theatre. For more information visit montrealsciencecentre.com/imax-telus-theater.
