Movie Times

I work odd hours which means that I get a weekday off.  I love getting all my errands done when the shops are a little quieter and parking is a little easier.  But mainly I love going to the movies on a weekday.
There’s something decadent about going to the movies on a weekday, with your popcorn and coke whilst everyone else is stuck in the drudgery of work.  Because it’s a weekday, more often than not, I see movies by myself.  This is actually a bonus because it means I get to be nosey and see who else has time off during the working week.  And then coming up with elaborate back stories for them all.

Today I saw August: Osage County.  It’s based on the play of the same name and somewhere in between the twentieth monologue I realised that it probably works better as a play.  However, I do like a good speech or two, I enjoyed it all. 

It’s about a family coming together for a reason that I won’t spoil.  And anyone who has ever spent an extended period of time with their own family, especially as one gets older, will recognise the frustrations and resentments.  And I think everyone could see a bit of themselves in each of the characters.

It’s a very dark, dark comedy.  I read a review that said that the movie was a lot more mean spirited than the play because with the medium of film, you can get right up close to someone and see the expression in their eyes as they say a hurtful line and you can see someone’s expression of pain as they react to it.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.  I want to talk about the audience.  Normally there is only a handful of people in the cinema with me, but for some reason, this cinema was FULL to the brim of women, ranging from middle-aged to old.  I was probably the youngest one there.  It was quite an odd experience because all I heard during the movie were the noises of women reacting.  Usually an audience is made up of equal men and women, and the laughing noise is lower because of men.  This movie, there was a lot of giggling and cackling- and it was really nice!  This movie is about women and it was fun to hear women reacting to that.  And this particular group of women were very reactive.  A sweet moment abruptly cut short was met with “oh no!’s” at several points across the cinema.  And a huge bombshell that was dropped encouraged a collective gasp from the entire cinema.

As a cinema goer, I tend not to react aloud to things.  I’ll laugh along if it’s funny but that’s about it.  But there was something in the air in that cinema because I gasped along with everyone else at that moment. 

It was a fun experience, sitting alone in a cinema but feeling part of something bigger.