Last week, I did something on my day off I'd never thought I’d ever do again: I snuck into a film underage.
The first time I did this was in 1985 to see Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider at the (long gone) Adelphi cinema in Dublin. This time it was for Robert Zemeckis’ Here, out in suburban Coolock, screening as part of my local Odeon’s over 55s 'Silver Screen’ strand.
In both cases, I played the hair and body language card to disguise my age. Back in ‘85, I kind of up-and-backcomed my 'do before strutting into the lobby of the Adelphi; while this time my salt and pepper bouffant spoke for itself, garnished with a fake limp just to be on the safe side.
My method acting worked; and it was worth it too. Here, starring Tom Hanks & Robin Wright, is told with a single, static shot; the camera never moves as it frames the history of a single location, from the Jurassic era to the present day - though mostly in a house built on that spot and the families which live and die there, with particular focus on the love story between characters played by Hanks and Wright.
Zemeckis' camera becomes essentially a window through which we observe all the passing drama, comedy and tragedy that comes with the struggle to find meaning and be happy. This picture was delightful, moving and packed - this was at 1pm in the afternoon. I left teary-eyed (I’m doing a lot of that in middle age), and as I, eh, limped across the lobby, I overheard an usher inform a group of enquiring silver-screeners that there would be no film next week as it was half-term. The over 55s were audibly disappointed at the thought of making way for the under 16s, even for one week.
The world might be fraying, our planet cracking, but we MUST have our art if we're going to fight on.
Up in my projection booth that weekend, I peered out the framed port window one day to the next and began to notice a pattern. Not just male-pattern baldness (which from my unique position way up on high I could compile pretty accurate statistics). I’m talking about bums on seats: it was jammers.
By Sunday in particular, screens one, two and three, show after show, there often wasn’t a seat left in the house.
Remember, at the Irish Film Institute we don’t show the latest manufactured Marvels; our line-up skews towards world cinema. These bums were out in force for David Lean’s Brief Encounter (tickets gone in a flash), Igmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (full house), Walter Salles’ Oscar winner I'm Still Here (sold out thrice), Sinead O’Shea’s Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story (all shows full, and it had already been on for a week).
The real stunner was Chantal Ackerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; three-and-a-half hours, during which Jeanne cooks dinner in real time, hosts family and engages in sex work from her flat in 1975’s Bruxelles. There’s ten minutes of her just peeling the potatoes - the camera rarely moves. And you know what? It’s mesmerising: pure cinema. You couldn’t get a seat for love nor money. The IFI weren’t the only ones swamped. That same weekend, The Light House cinema up the road announced their busiest Saturday since they opened the place back in 2008.
On the occasion when these shows finished near each other, a beautiful thing would happen: the audiences would meet in the lobby, zebra crossing each other's paths like rush hour in central Tokyo. The buzz was palpable. Cinematic cross pollination.
The world might be fraying, our planet cracking, but we MUST have our art if we’re going to fight on. Give us two hours in the dark (or three with an interval, if watching The Brutalist), whether its an encounter with Jeanne after we check-mate death on a Rio De Janeiro beach following one of Edna's legendary dinner parties; we’re all guests; we’re all bums; we’re all here. And so is cinema.
