I finally managed to watch “The Aviator” yesterday. After informing my boss that there was nothing to do in office, and that I needed some distraction after the life-threatening earthquake, I slid out at five.
There is something awkward about walking up to the ticket window and asking for one ticket. Moviegoing seems to be, by default, a community activity. I agree with this statement to a certain extent.
To me, the idea of watching a movie or a TV show all alone in a room is not very appealing. I don’t ask for a Greek amphitheatre with thousands of people sitting all around the stage watching a performance, but perhaps that’s where we get our need for watching performances in a group. Canned laughter and corny emotional music cannot make up for the laughs and tears that are evoked in people when they witness an act together.
The flipside is that you are most likely to end up surrounded by people whose sensibilities are not quite as refined as you would like them to be. They will miss all the subtle jokes, and will laugh uncomfortably during the serious scenes, and will receive calls from their dead ancestors at crucial moments. This is irritating while watching a play, but the super-dolby-trolby sound of the cinema hall good-naturedly accommodates all these fools.
Watching with people, however, does not mean bringing a set of people with you to watch a movie. People can come from their homes/offices with other people and make a nuisance of themselves in the seats around you. If you’re seriously there for the movie, you do not need someone to turn around and talk to, or to offer popcorn every two minutes.
With people who earn barely enough to make rent purchasing home theatre systems on easy instalments, the concept of the audience is sure to change dramatically soon. More and more people will watch movies in the confines of acoustically redesigned rooms in their homes. The cinema hall will become the exclusive domain of lovers looking for a dark corner, idlers looking for air-conditioned reclining beds, and teenagers with nothing better to do.
I don’t see the merit of the situation.
3 comments:
I haven't seen a home theatre system with a huge plasma projection screen ever, but I think that some movies are just meant to be watched in a cinema hall. Anywhere else it is just not the same.
Ofcourse if I could build the hall in my own backyard - but I do not earn quite that much.
This comment, btw, is all in the present. Who knows the way of the future? I don't.
lets hope thts not true for halls, the doomsayers said that newspapers will die with the afvent of the web, not true... cinemas wont die so easily i think!
i prefer watching a cinema with an audience - cuz an audience is a living thing - it breathes, it sighs... it grunts and cries and what not... its a single living mass... and i love feeling its pulse in addition to what i feel about the movie myself.
Post a Comment