Back in the days when it didn’t cost a small fortune to go, myself and a friend bunked off college for the afternoon and decided to head to the pictures. We went to the Savoy in O’Connell Street, which even then had begun the process of being internally carved up into an ever-increasing number of screens.
We hadn’t looked at a newspaper to see what was on, and when we arrived, had no idea whether the various offerings were any good or not. In those days, shockingly, people would discover if they liked a movie by going to see it.
We agreed that we both preferred to go into cinema number one – it still had a big screen – and what we saw was the original Alien movie. When it was over, we staggered out of the building, and for about an hour afterwards we barely spoke.
We hadn’t been prepared for things bursting out of John Hurt’s stomach, and with a cast of largely unknown actors, there wasn’t the predictive comfort of knowing who, if any, of the characters would survive.
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‘When the cinema lights came up, we all hugged, and I wondered why, on this day, the magic worked for me too’
Even by today’s standards, the special effects were convincing and unsettling: the slurping sounds of the monster were terrifying.
The memory of that cinema visit has always stayed with me, not just because of the film itself, but because, for whatever reason, I was completely open to suspending my disbelief. It’s not always something that happens for me. It can be a book or a film or a TV show, and they can be skilfully constructed, yet for some reason I can’t shake being aware of the artifice: I notice, even admire, the techniques used to make me believe it, but this puts me at a distance; it prevents me from fully believing it. I get in the way of my own enjoyment.
This can be frustrating, especially when watching something on a screen with Herself: who has the gift of being able to be completely enveloped by fictional worlds. She’s an arm-grabber: anything involving high levels of tension or violence and I’m left with bruises, while envying her level of immersion.
A couple of weeks ago we were stuck in the house while Storm Ashley raged outside. It threatened to uproot the elaborate Halloween spiders’ web we had attached to the front of the house and wrap itself around any passing pedestrian. So, to avoid neighbourly rage, we brought Daughter Number Four to the pictures.
On that day, not the most original idea. The cinema was thronged with children, many of whom seemed to be there to have loud conversations and argue with each other. In front of us was a row of men in their 20s: there, we assumed, because their hangovers were so severe that they’d stumbled in by accident. This was an animated kids film we were going to watch.
An hour in, Daughter Number Four reached over to take my hand. Herself was never so restricted. Her face shone with tears
The Wild Robot has been reviewed elsewhere in these pages, but the basic premise doesn’t have a lot of suspension-of-disbelief potential. Robot crashes on island. Learns to speak “animal” (not a real language). Interferes with the ecosystem by introducing a load of woke ideas. Goes “native”.
Except, about 20 minutes in, I noticed that the kids had fallen silent. An hour in, during a chase scene, Daughter Number Four reached over to take my hand. (She’s her mother’s daughter.) And towards the end, on two separate occasions, I felt a shudder run through me. Thanks to being brought up in a country where men were taught to be emotionally constipated, it didn’t turn into an embarrassing display of emotion.
Herself was never so restricted. When the lights came up, her face shone with tears. We all hugged, and I wondered why, on this day, the magic worked for me too. Perhaps it was the storm. As we left, the young men in front of us remained sitting: waiting for one of them to stop bawling his eyes out.