It had been ages since I’d gone to the cinema multiplex – you know, the kind in the vast parking lot beside the mall. Usually, when we go out for a movie, it’s an art house in Concord or a volunteer-run series at the Music Hall in downtown Portsmouth.
But Wes Anderson’s latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, was showing, and we figured we’d better make it there fast. No telling how quickly anything that quirky, formalistic, and savvy would be playing. (As we juggled our schedules, we realized it would have to be Monday night, overriding another activity on my itinerary – as we discovered, if you’re going to hit the big-box of showrooms, that’s the night to do it. We practically had the rectangular cavern to ourselves.)
I’ll leave it to others to lavish praise on the witty plotting that continually turned in unpredictable yet seemingly inevitable developments; the impressive casting and stylized acting; the precise cinematography; or the marvelous interweaving of actual sites in Germany (the hotel interior was actually the atrium of a defunct department store), miniature models of varied scales, and special effects to create a sense of fantastic and delightful artificiality. Anderson, as his fans know, is a moviemaking genius with a voice and vision all his own. (For one engaging detailed look at the roots of the story, click here.)
For me, though, the outing also invoked a series of culture shocks. Now that I’m “retired,” income’s tight, I’ll admit. I’m spending much less than I did before, and gasoline’s toward the top of my out-of-pocket budget. So the current ticket price (go ahead and laugh, you debonair rounders, when I tell you it was $11 apiece for three) made me gasp silently. (I know a good Greek restaurant where we could have dined out for that.) (I’m I really turning into this?)
From my end, it’s hard to take the very interior and decor of consumer society reflected in these big-chain outlets. It all feels plastic, cake-frosted, impermanent, unnatural. No one would want to linger in the vast lobby (what’s the point, anyway?), and no matter how plush, the showing rooms are – well, showing room sounds like something you’d find in a funeral home, which may be a good parallel, except that in much of the country, the mortuaries are usually in some amazing Victorian mansions. Nothing cookie-cutter about them, unlike these concealed warrens. None of this matches what I consider a theater or concert hall or even a house of worship, the kinds of places I prefer to assemble with others.
The third shock came in viewing the trailers and commercials. I’m still offended to be bombarded with big-screen ads after paying what I consider to be inflated ticket prices, after all, but to be hit twice with a promotion for a new computer game was especially egregious, especially with its pseudo-documentary interviews with its “creators,” a handful of pretentious nerds claiming social value for violent nihilism. I’m sorry, their world vision leads nowhere but destruction.
Actually, it was the amplified violence repeated in the trailers as well that most aggravates me. What in the American psyche so fosters terrorism of this scale? What justifies the reveling in gore for so many (and at such a price, even before we get to the price on our psyche)? Here’s the road that deserves a sermon of hellfire and brimstone, indeed. Wake up, folks, will you?
No wonder I prefer intimate, small-scale, gentle, playful, European or indie productions! They, in contrast, have soul and reality.
Anderson, I must confess, goes well beyond the small-scale criterion, but he earns the right to do so. And he’s generous to those who contribute to the effort, from the visual artists to the payroll accountants. One of the things that kept going through my mind as we were watching, actually, was an awareness of the lavish investment he was expending in the process and the question of whether he’d ever make it back. Well, maybe it wasn’t any greater than those of the futuristic trailers we’d watched beforehand, but still … Hollywood and Las Vegas have more in common than I’d like.
Maybe their biggest gamble is in making works that demand to be seen on the big screens rather than on our laptops or TVs via Netflix.
If you were a moviemaker or investor, what would you do? Or, as a film buff, what are you doing now?
Jnana's Red Barn 
I can’t answer for Hollywood moguls or film buffs. The theaters lost me years ago when ads for the Beef Council and Coca Cola joined the many other ads.
I enjoy the human theatre in the company of friends, and often with a backdrop like the wonderful ocean.
Nothing against those who partake. I just choose something else. The marketers don’t want me anyway.
Exactly!
We still go about once a year. The ticket prices are too much. We stop at a 7-11 and the kids get some candy. I once took my kids to a matinee (same $11 price) and we didn’t go to the concession and a guard stopped us and asked to look in my bag. I eat low carb and the kids had their candy stashed in their pockets to they found nothing. Ten minutes after they looked I became enraged. We’ve been back a few times since and they’ve never pulled that again. I think that may be because my husband was with me.
Yes, the concessions stand is a real ripoff, as my younger one taught me years ago. We no longer buy anything to eat at the multiplex, but the smaller houses are a different matter.
The invasion of privacy is truly offensive.
I love movies and was lucky to see this one at BAM in Brooklyn, a gorgeous old set of theaters, but still cut up and not a great screen. We have an 18-plex nearby and it kills me that there can be 18 screens and still not a single thing I would go see! It’s saving grace is $5 Tuesdays…though they are crowded!
I would have much rather seen this at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Still, a $5 showing would be tempting.
My spouse enjoys movies, often action films, and so we go–but tend to go on Tuesdays, when the price is $5 or so.
Still and all, I have to agree with you on the ads–though these are hardly new. I seem to recall an obscenely weird commercial for something called a “Yamahopper (I s__t you not) that showed before The Deer Hunter.
And the level of and glorification of violence is truly over the top. Sigh. But then my spouse and I have very different notions of what makes a good film, in spite of nearly 30 years together.
I’ve become the 39 year old who will only go to the first matinee showing for the “bargain” ticket and sneaks in her snacks in her purse because the exorbitance at the snack concession is beyond the pale. I don’t care if others accuse me of acting like “an old lady,” if it means I don’t pay too much for the few outings I choose to spend my money on in a year. (Including Wes Anderson films.) But I always bring a book or e-reader if I am my own date to the movies, so I can read through the ads and the trailers and ignore them despite their best heavy-handed attempts to get me to consume more than I choose.
Three cheers for you! Nothing like stirring up some underground rebellion.
We are so lucky to have not one but TWO second-run theaters where the ticket price is $1.50 for all showings. They also show much fewer trailers, so you don’t have to add half an hour to the running time of the film to figure out when you’ll be done. Once in a long while we splurge and go to to the multiplex. Even though the seats are a bit nicer, the overall experience (esp. 30 min. of ads and trailers) isn’t worth the cost differential in my estimation.
Well, Jnana, you got me going. I think that there is something really wrong with the short constant clips of gratuitous violence in tele and movie ads. I can take a good thriller/movie when I am watchign the entire thing, but this idea of showing 3-second clips of women raped, men maimed and every one stabbed or blown up is really just wrong. And the ads have no labeling, so they can be played at a pg movie.
The last movie I saw in a theater was Lord of the Rings. I was horrified at what he did with the book, turned it into all violence (left out Bombadil and anything else delightful and made it all gore without even the nuance of the addict) but most of all, I was horrified by the trailers. I said, no more. We rent and use netflix.
We gave up the tele ten years ago; I did nto want to give my energy and marketing time and $$ to the madmen. I read news and we choose what we watch. I am well-informed (much better than the constant stream of corporate 24/7 news distractions) and entertained.
If people want things to get better they have to do as Chogyam Trungpa said, “Don’t be so predictable.” The madmen know that horrified parents say, “this is bad” then watch it anyway, and give their $$ to it. I vote with my $$ and time.
Following you . . .
And you, too!