Netflix and Co no match for wonder of trip to the flicks
MY FIRST trip to the cinema was when I was four to see The Tales of Beatrix Potter, the ballet.
It’s ingrained on my memory mainly because the red velvet seat folded shut, sandwiching my tiny body like a slice of ham.
It was also my mother’s way of taking me to see a ballet when the theatre was way beyond her budget.
My mum had dreams of her daughter growing up cultured, and the next film she took me to was A Christmas Carol, which gave me the night terrors but an appreciation of Dickens.
The cinema is more than just another entertainment venue, it’s a memory marker of moments, small but significant.
As Cineworld is mothballed, and Odeon reduces its showings to weekends, it is sad to see cinemas disappear from our town and city centres.
For a company which was already over expanding and burning cash, Cineworld’s current fate is as much about corporate failure as Covid-19.
For the staff, Cineworld has been the villain of the piece – already on zero-hour contracts, they have been dumped like the love interest in a cheap chick flick.
We are about to see many low paid workers face a similar cruel fate, with no recourse because employment rights in this country are derisory and shameful.
During times of war and crisis, cinema has been a crutch but not now, when we baulk at the idea of being in a closed space together.
My dad used to talk about using jelly jars to get entry to the cinema during the war and he raised the fact with outrage every time he bought a ticket. He took me to see Watership Down and he cried more than me.
And in those days if you didn’t leave your seat, you could wait for the second showing and so we watched it all over again.
He bought me the video when I was in my 20s as a reminder that I was still his little kid.
When I was about six, my parents allowed my friend Fiona and I to go alone to see Jungle Book but it was sold out and so we spent the money in the amusement arcades.
Recently, at my lowest ebb caring for my mother, Fiona turned up as a district nurse and I threw my arms around her and we recounted the Jungle Book adventure, which dried my tears.
I don’t so much watch films as travel inside them, so utterly absorbed I consider the eating of nachos and the crinkle of sweet wrappers to be heinous crimes.
And if you can’t hold your wee for two hours, you should not be allowed in a cinema.
I wait until the credits have rolled before leaving my seat because that key grip or Mr Hank’s driver deserves to be acknowledged.
I can date different house shares by the flatmates I saw Pretty Woman and Groundhog Day with. And then there are the relationshipelationship markersmarkers, like when the credits rolled on Endless Love and my teenage crush dumped me.
Watching the film 1917 with my partner was a dark moment in our relationship, as Lance Corporal Blake lay dying to the offensive slurping of a toxic waste Slush Puppy.
Our first date was at the cinema and his chomping of popcorn like Pacman made me question my choices.
When I moved to Glasgow and considered myself a sophisticat, I took my mum to the Glasgow Film Theatre, only for her to ruin the moment by telling me it used to be the Cosmos and she had been cool long before me.
The GFT is my favourite cinema but my friends have banned me from choosing what we go to see, as my refusal to read reviews lest they ruin the plot has led us to some obscure stinkers.
Not Netflix, nor any streaming service, will ever match the shared wonder of a cinema trip and they certainly won’t anchor memories in the same way.
But coronavirus is not the death knell of cinema, just a plot point in a sorry tale we hope with all our hearts ends soon.