Scott: A year ago, a cinephile friend of ours remarked, upon hearing that Michael Haneke's Caché was shot on high-definition video: "Oh well, celluloid had a good run." It was clear to him—as it's clear to me—that film as we used to know it has changed, thanks to the prevalence of movies shot on a format that we generally associate with home viewing. I'm not convinced yet that digital cinema has reached the high photographic standards set by conventional celluloid. In fact, the onslaught of cruddy-looking DV projects has, in my view, crippled more than enhanced the American independent scene. However, there have been more reasons lately—Caché, for one, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's stunning Climates, for another—to believe that the gap is closing, and digital image is the wave of the very near future. (Considering the production, distribution, and print costs for celluloid, it's a no-brainer, really.) One of the major concerns of this development, for theater owners and film-lovers alike, is that there isn't enough distinction between the theatrical experience and the home-theater experience, especially with the rise of gigantic, high-resolution, widescreen HDTVs. When Jake Gyllenhaal was carted onstage at last year's Oscars to hail big-screen epics like Ben Hur and Lawrence Of Arabia, the industry's flopsweat over this issue was painfully apparent.
And yet I'm here to make a quixotic argument that seeing movies in a theater is still optimal, and to chide you for believing otherwise. For those who don't know, Noel lives in central Arkansas, which pretty much wipes out any possibility of him even getting a chance to see the majority of independent and foreign films in a theater. Add to that the fact that he has a wife and two young children, and that further limits what he can see, even though his wife is A.V. Club contributor Donna Bowman, who's one of the most voracious cinephiles (and bibliophiles, and tele-philes, and knitting-philes) I know. And yet, how many times, Noel, have I sent you a screener and agonized over you watching it at home? Or how about the many more times I've accused you of underrating a movie because you watched it at home with great distraction?
Before I yield the floor to you, let me first lay out in the most basic terms why seeing a movie in the theater is still vastly preferable to watching it at home: First, there's the basics of sight and sound. The quality of a movie theater may vary, but the fact remains that in general, a theater's screens are bigger, the sound is better, and the picture quality is of a much higher resolution than you could ever achieve at home. Again, I'll concede that the gap is closing a bit, but we're not nearly there yet. Second, and perhaps most important, is that in theaters, you're seeing movies in a (mostly) distraction-free environment. The lights are down, your seat is upright facing the screen, and the enormity of the screen and the sound is hopefully substantial enough to make it the most immersive possible experience. This ideal isn't always easy to achieve—some theaters are crappy, and some viewers chatter like they're in their living rooms—but it beats the myriad distractions at home, from poor lighting to ringing phones to the range of other voices (children, barking dogs, the traffic outside, etc.) that can pull you out of a movie.
So tell me, Noel, what's the argument for staying at home? Are there really any advantages, or are you really just trying to justify your current screen-deprived existence?
Noel: You can build the nicest theater in the world, but unless you can erect barricades to keep other people out, you can't really control the experience you're going to have, Scott. I think you've been spoiled by spending the better part of a decade primarily in screening rooms. "Some viewers chatter?" It's worse than that. In the real world, going out to the movies has become a frequently wretched experience, spoiled by cell phones, bored kids whose parents couldn't afford a babysitter, teenagers who theater-hop, and wise-ass college kids playing MST3K for the benefit of their drinking buddies. You complain about the distractions at home? I feel like I spend at least the first half-hour of every movie I see in a theater quietly fuming, before the audience begins to get interested in the story and the extraneous noise dies down.
Which brings up one point I'll concede to you about seeing movies in a multiplex. When a movie is really working—a comedy, especially—the audience adds to the experience. (I could argue that our differing opinions about Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest has a lot to do with the fact that I saw it with a roaring crowd, and you saw it with a bunch of stony colleagues.) And I do still like the ritual of buying my large Coke, and trying to guess what trailers I'm going to see, and all that fiddly stuff that I've been doing for decades now. But I'd just as soon do it with nobody around—and that includes other critics, who can shape the experience for each other a lot more than they pretend. (How else can you explain the way that the buzz on films we see at festivals seems to change based on which critics saw which screening, and who they sat with?)
Also, while I agree that there's nothing better than sitting in the dark and looking up at a big screen, I don't buy this idea that the technical aspects of theatrical presentation have been perfected. Even in the best stadium-seating theaters, I've seen movies projected with the wrong lens, or with the projector-bulb set too low, or with the focus and/or framing slightly off. In the kind of small-town theaters I frequent, you can add muffled sound and a weird smell to that equation. (What is that? Burned soup? Rancid oil?) State-of-the-art theaters eventually get superceded by even-more-state-of-the-art theaters, and the older models cut back on staffing and repairs.
And don't get me started on how much everything costs. I can buy a movie at Wal-Mart for what it costs to actually go to that movie—and that isn't even taking into account concessions. I did just that with The 40-Year-Old Virgin last year, and I got to see a more "complete" version of the movie to boot, at least according to the director. (More on that later.)
So, yeah, the phone may ring, or one of my kids may wake up and need to go to the bathroom, or I may get too comfortable in my cushy recliner and start to nod off. The same thing could happen if I read a book, yet no one insists that I couldn't possibly have appreciated the book "the way it was meant to be appreciated." Yes, I know that movies are a different medium, in which time and pacing are factors. But I ask you: What am I really losing if, say, I stop a movie, go to bed, then get up and watch the rest the next day?
I challenge you: Name some movies that "just aren't the same" when watched on DVD.
Scott: You're touching a raw nerve when you talk about movie-theater distractions, Noel. I'm not sure what has changed in the culture that has made talking in movies okay. Maybe we can blame it on convergence: Now that people have home theaters, perhaps they confuse actual theaters with their living rooms. Truth be told, I had a much bigger problem when I was in Miami, Florida for graduate school than I have here in Chicago. In fact, it got so bad in Miami that my friends and I used to plot little exit strategies whenever we went to the multiplex, agreeing before the lights went down to flee to a certain spot in case things got too noisy. This may sound like weakness, but the whole "exit strategy" idea came after we discovered that "shush"-ing people wasn't doing the trick; more often than not, they'd just look at you incredulously, as if you'd taken a dump on their lap. Apparently, there are vast segments of the population that have never been told that talking during a movie is rude.
I'll admit to being sheltered to some extent, though I spend more time in googolplexes than you might imagine. The screening room, of course, is such an ideal setting that it can't be reasonably compared to the real world: The space is small, but the seats are plush (and with a gentle rocking motion, too), the screen is perfectly proportioned, and the sight and sound are spot-on every single time. But I see movies with the public all the time, and my experience is quite a bit different: Maybe once or twice a year do I have problems with chatty people sitting behind me, and even then, I tend to see movies in state-of-the-art theaters where the sound completely overwhelms the din. I guess this isn't true where you live, but in Chicago, it tends to be survival of the fittest. If you don't make the requisite improvements to your theater and give people an experience that they couldn't possibly duplicate at home, then you can expect to be out of business soon. And I'd consider that a mostly positive side effect of the home-theater boom. (I say "mostly" because independent theaters have suffered to some extent.) It forces theater chains to step up their games. That dilapidated multiplex with the back-breaking chairs and the crackling monaural sounds just isn't going to cut it anymore. And as for the price, again, you have a different experience than I do: Paying $9 in a big city to do anything is a cheap night out; paying $9 in your home town, where parking is free and the myriad all-you-can-eat buffets will fill your stomach for half that, is quite another story.
So the choice for you, Noel Murray, isn't remotely the same as mine. My choice is, "Should I see a movie at home, or should I go to the local googolplex, where there's stadium seating, a large screen with overwhelming surround sound, and prices more reasonable than any other entertainment option in the city?" Your choice is, "Should I see a movie at home, or should I go to a run-down theater with shitty sight and sound, and a bunch of cell-phone-packing teenagers blabbing in my ear?" And since you have kids, you probably have to hire a babysitter, which adds to the already exorbitant cost of going to the movies. Needless to say, my choice is substantially better than your choice. Given your options, I'd probably have to concede that staying home is the best thing to do, but not before first cursing the gods for locating a cinephile like myself in such an inhospitable locale.
But in most circumstances, I still think that seeing movies in a theater is best. For me, this has little to do with watching a movie with an audience—even an alleged crowd-pleaser like that boring old Pirates Of The Caribbean sequel. Granted, I'll never forget being part of sold-out festival screenings of Michael Haneke's Funny Games and Caché, when the collective gasp of a thousand people at certain points (and if you've seen the films, you know what points I'm talking about) sucked all the oxygen out of the room. But as a critic, I often curse those occasions in which I have to give up a night at home in order to get crammed into a promotional screening with loud-mouthed DJs tossing T-shirts into the crowd.
Primarily, I go to the theater because it's the most absorbing way to connect with the movie in question. You thinking pausing a movie is no big deal, but for me, it's like a spell is broken. And I don't really think it's all that different with books either, though you may have to put those down for practical reasons. (Even then, hasn't everyone had the experience of staying up all night to finish a book?) There are no such continuity problems at a movie theater: Once the lights go down, the movie starts and it never stops, and there's theoretically nothing else competing for your attention. Like a lot of cinephiles I know, I have a favorite spot that I seek out every time: Middle to front row, dead center of the row, at just enough distance where I can see both sides of the screen through my peripheral vision.
And, finally, to answer your question about movies that "just aren't the same on DVD," I'd give you a broad criterion: If it was shot on film, then it's better seen in a theater. Some cases are different than others—I think Lawrence Of Arabia can be prioritized over, say, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo—but there are so many films released each year that "just aren't the same on DVD" that I don't have the bandwidth to name them all.
So answer your own rhetorical statement: Are there any movies that you feel have to be seen in a theater, or is that groove in your couch too damned comfortable to leave?
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