Aheli Moitra
In the depths of the jungle, in the middle of the night, our little hero is busy in a marshy pit, surrounded by a herd of elephants. It is a particularly dark scene and you have to strain your eyes to figure what really is transpiring on the big screen as the projectionist has not brightened it. And just as the suspense unfurls, someone opens the door at the back of the theatre, flooding it with light. The scene you’ve been waiting for has come and gone. You have no clue why the elephants have taken a liking to Mowgli.
This was Jungle Book, the film, as seen in Dimapur. Surely such instances are aplenty anywhere else.
June last year the new avatar of an old film theatre re-opened in Dimapur town. The excitement was so much so that a reviewer rooted for Dimapur’s entertainment-starved audience to “get ready to enter the celluloid world and immerse in its magic.”
And, indeed, this is exactly what (good) cinema seeks to achieve—take you away from the agitation, corruption, lack of water, sanitation, electricity, the oppressive heat, the unrelenting government, the heartbreaks, and the other many losses for a few hours. In a cinema theatre, we gain the upper hand of watching the lives of multiple characters go by. Without having to apply ourselves very much, we can watch a story unfurl. Depending on how the film is written, directed and produced, our popcorns disappear into the black holes the theatre creates.
And that is the price we pay for at a theatre, among other amenities. With so many people cluttered into a place, it is also a big task for the staff to keep the space clean and hygienic, sharp and running. However, as in Dimapur, it is not necessary to provide someone who buys a cheap ticket with an uncomfortable viewing experience as opposed to someone who can afford a ticket at a higher price. Either human being would be able to feel the discomfort of numbness creeping up the backside sitting on plastic chairs. The magical cinematic experience, for them, could end pretty quickly.
But this is not an essay on class. As an aficionado, one goes to the cinema theatre instead of downloading the film online because most high budget films are produced for the big screen. Graphics have reached an impeccable degree of precision, camera work has become dramatic—overall production of good films today can be a breathtaking experience.
To do justice to both the audience as well as the film makers, it is important that theatres employ good projectionists, and norms while screening a film. Constantly opening and closing of main doors, poor sound quality, going into ‘intermission’ in the middle of a song, stopping the film even before all the credits have rolled leave the viewer with an incomplete film experience. While we are not complaining about the efforts that have gone into reviving the single screen theatre, not even asking for an IMAX experience, small changes in the existing theatre could go a long way in enriching the experience of the “magical immersion” we call cinema.
Experiences may be shared at moitramail@yahoo.com
