‘People together, ignoring one another – I can’t wait to return to the cinema after lockdown’

Cinemas require us to accept and tolerate one another. Just as the films we see there reflect ourselves, so too does the audience we share it with, writes Ryan Hewitt

(Jacek Zmarz)

Ever since the UK government imposed a coronavirus lockdown, many of us have been surprised to discover that it’s the little things – not the extravagant or the particularly earth-shattering – that we’ve missed the most. The Independent lifestyle desk’s new essay series, Life After Lockdown, is an ode to everything we took for granted in the pre-Covid world – and the things we can’t wait to do once again when normality eventually resumes.

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Bond was the first to fall. Then went A Quiet Place Part II, Fast and Furious 9, our hopes and dreams, and then the shutters came down. Along with most everything else, the UK lockdown brought about the closure of the nation’s cinemas.

What I wouldn’t give to be sat quietly in a dark room watching a film. Not the dark and quiet room I’ve been sat in for the last 90 consecutive nights, re-watching classic feel-good films of the pre-lockdown age. No, I’m talking about the kind of dark room that you have to pay for the privilege to sit in, to watch something you might not like very much, surrounded by people who have silently agreed to ignore one another over the course of two hours. That’s what I long for. People. Together. Ignoring one another. Quietly.

It’s 2017, I’m watching Terrence Malick’s Song to Song in a small but sold out screen, sat with people who just like me sought out this film in one of the few London cinemas to show it. At some point, someone stands up and walks out. I’m entranced so I’ve no idea how long it’s been, but a few scenes pass and it’s clear that someone is not coming back. Without a word, they have shared their review with us all. I feel they’ve been a little rash. An epiphany, I’m sure, awaits at the end of the film in just (checks watch) 75 minutes!

People have long evangelised about the holiness of cinema. Holy multiplex, holy surround-sound, holy 35mm, holy reclining seats, holy Nolan, holy Tarkovsky, holy Marvel Studios. But the truly divine part of cinemagoing is found in the congregation. It’s in the row upon row of domed heads that sit in-front of you, creating a scalloped bottom edge of an otherwise perfect 1.85:1 frame. Some talk of worshipping the screen, but I’m there for the “brothers and sisters in cinema” vibe. We’re all here looking for something. Sensing what your neighbour is looking for is all part of the shared experience.

I’m sitting in a quiet cinema screen somewhere in South London, watching A Most Violent Year with barely another soul in the audience. Someone is eating popcorn. Loudly. A voice pipes up from behind. “Can you stop rustling?” It’s firm, it’s irritated… it hasn’t not gone down well. The rustler rustles on defiantly, and the climax of J.C. Chandor’s very compelling thriller is pregnant with the inevitability of an unexpected post-credit sequence. As soon as Oscar Isaacs’ name leaves the screen, the real drama begins to unfold two rows behind me. Thankfully it passes without incident.

The truly divine part of cinemagoing is found in the congregation

Cinemas require us to accept and tolerate one another. Just as the films we see there reflect ourselves, so too does the audience we share it with. Not everyone will respect the craft in the same way. Not everyone will laugh at the right parts. Not everyone will silently hold their breath while you hold yours. When these things don’t align, we’re reminded that none of us own the space in a cinema screen. We share it with people we don’t know, who want different things from it, all choosing to watch the same film at the same time through a shared notion that this particular film, right now, could be just what we were looking for. When these things do all come together, when you feel that collective intake of breath, everyone surrendered to the fantasy, well there’s nothing quite like it.

There are those who consider cinema a solo pursuit best enjoyed with no one in front of or beside you. Then there are those – I’ve seen them – who prefer to watch a film in 30-minute chunks, stood on a packed central line tube, viewed on a horizontal phone screen perched on a heroically strained little finger. For me, it’s a bustling cinema, a bit of popcorn and a premium larger carefully nursed over 90 minutes so as to stave off an unscheduled interval.

Don’t test me on this, but I remember the cinemas I’ve sat in as much as I do the films I saw in them. I remember Donnie Darko at the Trocadero. I remember Saw at the Uxbridge Odeon with the man sat behind me trying to reason aloud with the horror show unspooling on screen: “It’s a gun… no, it’s a saw… no, it’s a gun!” I remember Moonlight at Curzon Mayfair and Wuthering Heights at Soho, Control at the Manchester Printworks and Inherent Vice at the Covent Garden Odeon (and then again at the Ritzy). I remember Things to Come in the courtyard of Somerset House with a cool August breeze and À bout de souffle atop the Queen of Hoxton under a poncho in the pouring rain. I remember Black Panther at the Peckham Plex where the person next to me started snoring the place down and Jackass 3D at the Apollo with the guy who laughed non-stop (oh, wait, that was me)

When you feel that collective intake of breath, everyone surrendered to the fantasy, well there’s nothing quite like it

When I enter a cinema again, once they open for first time after lockdown, it will be along with countless other people who too have waited a long time for that sanctuary. We’ve all been in lockdown together and we’ll all soon be together in cinemas again.

Some will be there to marvel at the majesty of the big screen, at the craft of filmmaking and the spectacle of these great works of art and commerce. Some will be there in search of enlightenment and it’s true that there are those films from which you emerge to find that the world looks a little different to before. A bit like how I imagine it will feel to emerge from lockdown. Some will be there for catharsis, to laugh and shiver and cry and exorcise the recent weeks and weeks that have been hard going for some, harder for others. And some will be there for popcorn, a warm, comfy seat and a disco nap.

Ryan Hewitt is Head of Exhibition Marketing at Curzon