Cinemas will show King Charles’s coronation. Is this their crowning glory, or a servile sop?
For some, the cinema will be a sanctuary from the onslaught of the coronation. It will be a dark, warm, safe space to visit for anyone who wants to seal themselves away from the flagwaving inanity of the rest of the country next Saturday lunchtime. It sounds incredibly inviting. I haven’t ruled out doing it myself.
That said, anyone who plans to use their local cinema as a coronation escape hatch might want to check ahead a little bit first. If, for example, their plan was to visit the Showcase Cinema de Lux in the Bluewater shopping centre, then I am afraid they are doomed to be thwarted. This is because, according to a press release, the cinema will be showing the coronation free of charge.
More than that, in fact. The cinema has chosen to rename its bar area The King’s Gallery. The drinks it serves have been renamed things like Corgi Cosmo and Monarch Mojito. A new portrait of King Charles will be hung there, painted by the cinema’s vice president of global marketing. Showcase even hired a King Charles lookalike to sort of wander around for a photoshoot. “King Charles seemed extremely impressed with the refurbishment”, said the press release of a man they hired specifically to look extremely impressed with the refurbishment.
Now, the big question is whether this is a good idea or not. Should cinemas be showing the coronation? I have to admit, I’m a little on the fence about it. My first instinct was that it instantly devalues the concept of cinema. To go and see a film is to witness a vast, expensive vision of imagination that has been specifically designed to be seen in that precise environment. The image will have been calibrated for maximum spectacle. The sound will burst forth overwhelmingly. Cinemas are engineered to be full-body – sometimes even out-of-body – experiences.
It isn’t something you necessarily equate with live BBC television footage of a carriage slowly trundling past a branch of Pret. Indeed, had the film pioneers of a century ago realised that one day their defining contribution to global culture would be used to show Huw Edwards listlessly filling for time while thousands of elderly dignitaries edge their way into Westminster Abbey, there’s a good chance they might not have bothered with it.
That said, this is far too precious an attitude to take. Cinemas, as we all know, are in trouble. People are only too happy to avoid seeing new releases theatrically now, because they know that they’ll just turn up for free on Disney+ in a few weeks. When a film does even reasonably well these days, it’s an anomaly. The death of the theatrical experience is real, and cinemas need to change or die.
Viewed through this lens, showing the coronation seems like a no-brainer. People will turn up. Seats will be filled. They might cry, like you did during Titanic. They might laugh, like they did during Home Alone. They might drunkenly vomit, like one guy did at the end of The Dark Knight when I went to see it 15 years ago. The actual content of the coronation might be dull and staid, but the feeling it will engender inside the cinema has the potential to be absolutely joyous.
And who knows, simply being in a cinema might remind the coronationwatchers why they used to love cinemas. They might become flooded with nostalgia. They might clutch each other’s hands over the armrests like they did when they were teenagers. They might see a poster for a new release, and decide to take a chance on it, and fall in love and start going to the cinema regularly again. There is a chance – a small one, but a chance – that putting the coronation on in cinemas will save cinema as we know it.
So, on reflection, I think I am all for this turn of events. The coronation should be shown in cinemas. In fact it should only be shown in cinemas, because that way all the people who actually like that rubbish will all be in one place and I’ll be able to go about my day unimpeded.