We’ll need more than a gun to see off the monster in our midst
LAST week I went to the cinema for the first time since March last year.
I recalled that distant evening, watching Kristin Scott Thomas in Military Wives, in an auditorium almost totally empty. At that stage we were still free to go out as we wished, but the intellectuals of North Oxford, among the best-educated people on the planet, were already in a state of total panic. That night the pubs and the restaurants were empty too.
I should have grasped then that many people actually wanted to be afraid, wanted to stay at home, wanted to wear masks, wanted to shut down society. But I didn’t.
The film I chose to see last week was A Quiet Place Part II, the sequel to a clever movie in which the world is invaded by aliens who cannot see us, but have incredibly sensitive hearing. Emily Blunt, looking beautiful but cross, is one of a tiny group who have learned how to kill these monsters. A fair amount of the story takes place in abandoned scenes of a deserted civilisation, and the huge, empty complex in which I watched it rather reminded me of this. I viewed it entirely alone, in a large theatre, feeling a bit like Stalin as I did so.
A disaster movie in the middle of global panic is rather an odd experience. But as I watched the monsters ripping and crashing through an ordered and peaceful civilisation, at unbelievable speed, I thought they made a pretty good metaphor for the inflation that’s now definitely coming our way, as predicted here quite a lot.
And you won’t be able to fight that off with a wonky hearing aid and a shotgun.