Picture yourself attending a cinema screening in the twentieth century: whichever your mind immediately casts itself back to, the image is often the same: a winding maze of a queue, massive buckets of popcorn, a full theatre, crowds streaming through the exit at the end, excitedly discussing their reaction to the whirlwind story they have just witnessed.
It’s a romantic image, perhaps a sentimentalised image – young couples in the 1940s, passing through an art deco foyer, formally dressed-up, through to the 2000s with a group of awkward and giggly teenagers chatting in the row as the trailers roll before the lights finally dim. The golden age of Hollywood might arguably have been about 60 or 70 years ago, but the tradition of going to the cinema is one that has endured.
Much has been written about the decline of cinema, especially in the age of streaming, and indeed the availability of film on demand has caused significant harm to the cinema industry. As with seemingly everything else, it’s cheaper to stay at home, to prop your computer on your lap and stream Netflix, or to stream a film on your smart TV. It is efficient, it is convenient. It is also, I think, a little bit isolating, somewhat lacking the excitement and enjoyment of a night out to the cinema with your friends.
It is true that streaming services have a much greater amount of content to pick from relative to the cinema, but as I write this, I’ll take a quick scroll through Netflix. Granted, there are some very good films: Blade Runner 2049 for example; Shrek, I suppose – who doesn’t like a bit of Shrek? But an awful lot of the content isn’t stunning, or even recent. Baby Driver wasn’t a bad film, but I saw it in cinemas a couple of years ago. The Baywatch film wows me in an unintended way with its 18% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As other studios pull content from Netflix in favour of their own streaming platforms (see the loss of Friends from Netflix, which has drawn more international outcry than China’s imprisonment of ethnic minorities), it is more and more difficult to find a film or television show that you really desire to watch. Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, NBCUniversal: how many subscriptions will consumers have to get to keep up? Perhaps going to see one good, choice film would be worth more than sifting through several streaming services full of filler. Movies are made to be seen on the big screen, after all.
Granted, cinema is not always accessible – the closest one from my home in the midlands is nearly an hour away by car. However, in Dublin there is no excuse not to go occasionally – one of my friends recently grabbed me to go along to see Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and it was immensely enjoyable. That film’s title and setting notes our enduring fascination with cinema, with storytelling, with the creation of alternate realities. Cinemas may not have the glamour of old, but they have comfy seats galore and a much more enveloping sound system and screen than a dodgy 13.3-inch laptop can muster.
The next time you feel the desire to see a film, grab a few friends and make a bit of an experience out of it – chances are the film you see will be newer, more relevant, and far more engaging. And looking back, you’ll remember it a lot more, as you stumbled out the door, blinking in the daylight, eagerly discussing the twists, the ending, and the gags, than if you had just wordlessly closed your laptop and switched off the bedside lamp.
