Cassandra Gardiner returns with this week’s offering. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
A heightened sense of expectation, walking-up the entrance stairs, buying a ticket, entering the auditorium and deciding where to sit. Disengaging from life, reality and habitat, whatever genre, thriller, horror, fantasy, sci-fi or true life, into somebody else’s vision. Details compressed into story, narrated for an audience to follow and identify with.
Sitting-down, waiting, as the trailers pass, the lights fade, the room goes dark, filling with surround-sound. Turning-off from the blur of daily life, anticipating something different, exciting and greater than personal experience. Eyes visually engaged, locked to the screen, noises lifting to the action and the mind running with every scene.
Whetting the appetite
More depth, more tears, more thrills and heightened unbelievability, secretly appealing to each of us, could we, would we have done that? The exhilaration, the love of having a story told, whether little or old. Whatever the tale, for the time it runs, it is yours, your interpretation, your views, memories and knowledge; the watcher cruising with the Director, his team and the actors through a make-believe passage of time, place and situation. Like a delicious meal, whetting the appetite, tasty, ample, fully satisfied, with desert and wine, a great movie is nourishment for the mind, heart and soul.
Exiting the theatre, returning to the familiar, the colours not so bright, the people less dramatic and the volume normal. It’s probably a good thing, although a part of me wishes not.
Shared memories
Once in an old cinema, on Shaftesbury Avenue, London, a fellow first-row partaker shared an extra delight with me. Chucked under the stage and probably never-used, were several booster seat blocks. With our feet up, we agreed complete submersion – where to see what’s happening at the periphery on a big screen, turning is essential – is the best way to indulge in film.
At the end we exchanged smiles and parted. We never met again, but what sticks was our gleeful delight expressing our needs, to be engulfed in waves of sound, motion and picture.
To read more of Cassandra Gardiner‘s work, visit her blog.
Image: We get bored under CC BY 2.0
