Firstly, when a film showing is pencilled in for 8.10pm, I’d expect the main feature to begin earlier than 8.30pm. Yet, we were treated, if that’s the word for it, to twenty minutes of glossy adverts and loud, overblown trailers before the BBFC certificate appeared and the previously chatty audience piped down. No such off-screen activity at Inception, no doubt as the audience was trying to keep up with the breakneck speed of the film, particularly during the elongated heist sequence. There was, however, something which still made me mindful of the problems that can beset the cinema-goer, namely an inquisitive companion. “Do you think that’s a dream, now?” “Oh, that Leo’s a good actor, isn’t he?” “I bet he’s made that happen in his subconscious.” Fortunately for me, these questions weren’t coming from my mate, but I had to feel for the poor woman next to me who was being bombarded with questions by her viewing partner (And perhaps partner in real life. We’ll never know.) for the first half hour of the film. If it wasn’t ruining the experience for her, it damn near would have done for me had she not been bridging the gap between the two of us. Alan Partridge once said, “I just hate the general public,” and I can see where he’s coming from. People are very annoying by nature, and we really can’t all just be friends. Place them in a pressure cooker situation like a cinema and even the most accepting and kind-hearted person will be broken following ten minutes of cinema chat in close quarters. My own personal tirade against cinema noise stems from a school screening of Disney’s Robin Hood when I was about eight. My good friend and I sat together to watch the film and I was giddy with excitement, if I’m honest. This was one of the first feature-length films I’d ever seen, and for school to be giving us a chance to watch it seemed like the best day ever at the time. That was until my former best friend started telling me what was going to happen next every five minutes or so. When I watch a film for the first time, I need to be left alone to breathe it all in. As an art form, films deserve to be studied closely. As sheer entertainment, they equally deserve a captive audience, but in recent years I have only witnessed silent audiences in a packed cinema for three films: The Dark Knight, Quantum Of Solace and Spider-Man 2. It’s no coincidence that each of these were big event movies and that one of them, Quantum Of Solace, was an 18-only screening. Big event movies, like Inception, pull in big audiences but, if they’re interesting enough spectacles, can command silence like no other film. Mesmerising audiences tends to have that effect. Those films aside, however, I can think of countless examples of where films have been, if not ruined, then certainly sullied by the inane banter of kids, adults and friends. Now, I’m not saying that audiences can’t add to a film. I have fond memories of watching The Matrix: Reloaded in a packed screening when the entire room whooped and sighed at the finale of the stretched-out motorway chase sequence. It’s shared moments like that that you just can’t get from watching a movie at home and I wouldn’t want to deny myself or anyone else that experience. However, for every Matrix: Reloaded there are several others: The Bourne Ultimatum, Iron Man and Transformers, to name but a few memorable examples in which I’ve found myself battling with my own sense of injustice at insensitive idiots being allowed into the same cinema as me, so much so that I’ve missed huge chunks of the film (although I appreciate that, with Transformers, that didn’t really matter too much). And, if it’s not people talking, it’s audience members sitting around you taking up my much-needed personal space. Whether it’s using my drinks holder (right or left, it’s never clear), stretching their feet out into my footwell, or worse, kicking me in the back of my seat, sitting at the cinema is rarely comfortable for me. Sometimes, going to the cinema alone is the only option, and I’m reminded of the time I saw The Matrix at the Loew’s State Theatre in New York’s Times Square, underneath Virgin Megastores (I understand this cinema has now closed, shame) when the film was nearing the end of its run and there were only five or six of us in the screening. I had a row to myself, I could hear and watch everything in peace, and the film itself was a breath of fresh air at the time. This was a close to the perfect cinema experience for me. Perhaps I’m just pining for that again too much.
