Movie Theatre Culture

I never like to judge a place until I have experienced the movie theatre culture of the area, for really, what is the point of traveling half way around the world if not to sit in a dark room and totally disengage myself from reality by escaping in a fabricated fantasy?  As a great believer in over-involved audience participation, I long for the recreation of the mythical stories of audience members screaming in fright and ducking under chairs when the Lumiere brothers’ train came hurling at them from the screen, or when the bandit in The Great Train Robbery pointed his gun at the audience and, with a stone faced stare, pulled the trigger. The closest I had come to this movie going pandemonium was insane cinema fanatics threatening to break out in fistfights when somebody’s cell phone went off during the film.  With dreamy aspirations, I came to India as my last hope of finding some place to live out this fantasy.  It had to happen here; did not Om Shanti Om clearly depict this zeal when Shah Rukh Khan as a deeply affected audience member broke into dance in the middle of the aisles as he watched in rapture Deepika Padukone dance in the movie within the movie (hmmmm, how postmodern can we go here)? That happens all the time in India, right?

My mission began on day one of my arrival, as I started slyly dropping hints that somebody should take me to the movies.  “Somebody should take me to the movies. I REALLY want to go.”  Sly. And finally subtlety paid off and it was time to sing my favorite “Let’s go the movies” song from Annie and head to the cinema!  Now, so much spectacular build up will in the end eclipse the final experience, and how could anything live up to my years of anticipation, and really how can any conclusion outshine the oh so fabulous introduction to this story, so at this point all I can really say is that yes, it lived up to all my wildest dreams.  We all stood for the national anthem, the audience cheered for the hero and whistled for the heroine, children were climbing over the seats, people carried out long conversations with their neighbours and on their mobiles, there was spitting, there were snacks, it was awesome.   And while there wasn’t any full out dancing in the aisles (and really, who could do that better than SRK?), there was definitely some head bobbing and toe-tapping; there is a lot of potential, and I will take initiative, I will lead a movement, and one day, in one cinema, oh, mark my words, there will be dancing in the aisles once again!

Coming next week: my disastrous foray with the Telugu Film Industry.  Words were had, and it was not pretty…