Often you'll hear and read reasons for not going to see a movie. If it isn't that the movie itself is undesirable, or considered mediocre and not worth $9, then there could be any number of examples people drawn upon that equate to an anticipated unpleasant moviegoing experience. Nevertheless, I think we will probably always be moviegoers because of our haphazard desire to trade the semi-solitude of one's home for the communal experience of seeing a movie in a theater. But the theater, of course, has its evident drawbacks.
Here are a few negative examples from my adventures in moviegoing: a teenager sitting behind me who sneezed into the back of my head during Die Hard with a Vengeance; a girl loudly chewing gum for the entirety of Take the Lead. A man chomping on his fingernails during The DaVinci Code. College students carrying on conversations during Smokin' Aces. A man taking two cell phone calls during Children of Men. Sure, inconsiderate acts are numerous when I attempt to remember them. But focusing on such things doesn't induce moviegoing happiness.
Despite these annoyances, why is it still better for you to see a movie at the theater? Because there, in a dark cinema with unknown people, you capture that feeling of a shared experience. "It's all about emotion," says New Yorker film critic David Denby. "The emotions swell in a group in a way they don't when you're at home." Denby presents the term: synesthesia, "Where one sensory experience sets off another," and the emotional effect of the social viewing experience is compounded.
Seeing a movie at home, or online, or on your iPod is a marvelous convenience - take it from someone who remembers the pre-video days of the '70s. You can see what you want, when you want. However, at the theater you surrender what those devices give you: control. You have to be at the theater at a certain time, you take your seat with the audience, and you let the artist (the filmmaker) take over. In doing this, your emotional experience of the movie is taken to another level, and the movie's messages can be far more impressionable.
Here's a "power of emotion" analogy. Imagine attending a baseball game where you're the only person in the grandstands. How fun would that be? On the other hand, what's it like when there's 40,000 screaming fans? It's overwhelming. That's the beauty of seeing a movie at the theater. You're putting yourself in a place where you surrender the artist and share in the emotion.
Poet Walt Whitman observed in his poem I Sing the Body Electric...
I'd preceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough...
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
Keep this in mind: for every inconsiderate act you might recall from your movie-going experiences, there are numerous positives you've experienced which off-set them. Here are few positive examples from my adventures in moviegoing: the audience at the advance screening for Snakes on a Plane (one the rowdiest I've ever seen, even more than Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace); seeing The Host, Jules et Jim and Antoine and Collette at classic little Brattle Theater in Cambridge; winning a cool, "Browncoat" T-Shirt by answering a trivia question prior to a screening of Serenity; seeing the hilarious Dodgeball and Wedding Crashers with my friends; seeing Casino Royale with a group of James Bond aficionados; the premieres of War of the Worlds, Superman Returns, and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and so on. Absolutely fun.
Last Wednesday, I spoke with Edgar Wright, the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (which will be released in April). He expressed a similar concern about the state of moviegoing. His point is, and I'm paraphrasing, that a trip to the theater ought to be a positively memorable experience. In fact, going to a theater should be so much fun, it almost shouldn't matter how good the movie is.
Edgar pointed out that there are a few places, a few movie palaces, that no matter what's playing, it's still fun to see a movie there. These aren't boring 20-screen cinema villages with DLP digital projection and sound, these are the quaint old theaters where the owner's make the experience fun. There's The Alamo Draft House in San Antonio and The Arclight theater in Los Angeles. And over in England there's The Electric in Notting Hill and The Prince Charles in London. When you see movies in these theaters, you can feel the love.
So, you want to get in on those good feelings? Then close out of YouTube, put down your iPod, turn off your VCR and get on over to the small, second-run theater you've been meaning to visit, and be grateful that you still can. Find your seat in the audience, surrender to the artist and let the movie overwhelm you.
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as a sea.
