I volunteer at an oldschool DVD rental shop. Being up a narrow, red-carpeted staircase that frankly gives off terrible vibes, the shop doesn't get many visitors. Especially not when I'm there from 5-8pm on a Thursday night. So every Thursday I sit at the shop's heavy counter, put a movie into the blu-ray player, and watch. When someone drifts off the street and takes a chance on the shop, the movie gets paused and I pretend to be happy they've stepped in until I can shoo them out with their DVDs. The shop next door has been having significant work done, so sometimes Rashomon is undercut by the loud hum of machinery. The sound comes from the TV itself rather than a sound system, and I keep it low in case a surprise sex scene jumpscares me.
David Lynch and James Cameron think people should really be watching movies in cinemas. This was a talking point about 5 years ago, so I'm very late talking about this and nobody really cares anymore. Regardless, I was reminded about these articles recently and now I can't stop thinking about them. As a refresher: people use phones to watch movies now. James Cameron isn't a fan. As he stated in an interview with NPR:
"I think when you start looking at something on a phone, you're sort of missing the point. Going to a movie theater is less about the size of the screen and the perfection of the sound system. And it's more about a decision to not multitask.
I think that's the critical part that people are missing. You're making a deal between yourself and a piece of art to give it your full attention. And you don't when you're at home. People don't cry as much when they watch a movie at home as they will in a movie theater. You don't have the depth of emotion."
David Lynch wasn't too pleased either, stating "If you're playing the movie [Inland Empire] on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film".
He also said, "Before, we made a feature film for the big screen, with nice big speakers. We built the film as if it were a theater itself. You could sit down and actually have this experience of stepping into a whole new world. Now that's all in the bloody history books! It's distressing. And a lot of things are seen on phones and tablets. I always say: people think they've seen a movie, but if they've watched it on a phone, they haven't seen anything. It's sad. But they say: 'We don't care, we saw it, it's your problem if you think otherwise.' What can you do?"
These quotes really interest me because the two directors are, essentially, suggesting there is a right way to watch a movie. When you watch a movie on your phone, you don't experience the movie 'completely'. You feel less emotion - "You'll be cheated", in Lynch's words.
There's two main points running through these quotes. One is that watching movies outside of cinemas introduces distractions. The other is that it makes the quality of the movie worse. I don't think either of these are really true, but I can see where they're coming from. In broad strokes, you probably will see the movie on a larger screen, with more surround sound, if you see it in a cinema. You probably will be more likely to turn off your phone. But obviously I disagree with these points enough to make a whole blog post about it, so here I go.
Watching movies in the cinema wasn't always a quiet affair that demanded unwavering attention. In the brilliant Logics of Attention: Watching and Not-Watching Film and Television in Everyday Life, Dan Hassoun notes that "whereas colonial-era theatergoing had been marked by noisy rowdiness and rabble-rousing (very often by the upper-classes), the theater of the nineteenth century became more of a site for regulated civility. (Butsch 2000)" (Is it bad to quote sections that themselves include APA references? I'm literally studying a postgrad right now, I should really know these things.)
From the communal gathering spaces as see in Cinema Paradiso, the modern cinema has become significantly more solemn. People who loudly bitch about the movie with their friends are shushed and told off. When people watched movies in rowdy, rabble-rousing environments, did they get the true experience? Did they miss out on something? When we watch a movie in a perfectly silent cinema, do we miss out on something?
Movies being 'better quality' in cinemas is also debatable. You can't change the volume or up the brightness in a cinema, and for those with sensitive ears the pain can far outweigh the benefits. If you get an odd angled seat or some tall bastard sits in front of you, the screen may be partly obscured. Or, like the sunflower seed munching moviegoer in Goodbye Dragon Inn, the infuriatingly endless eating of a fellow viewer may drive you to insanity.
To be clear, I like watching movies in the cinema. Especially kaiju movies, where the heavy surround sound rumbling sound makes it feel like you're at risk of being stepped on or thrown out of your seat by Godzilla's nuclear breath. But my most touching, most emotionally resonant recent film experience came from watching Jacques Cousteau's movie The Silent World at the DVD rental. I multitasked. I took a break halfway through to make some tea and returned to marvel at the bizarre, alien lifeforms Cousteau found crawling on the ocean floor. Whenever I had to pause the movie to help a customer, I was still thinking about the parrot fish and barracudas sparkling and dancing through the waves. As I drove home that night, every streetlight was a luminescent fish. The inky blackness I drove through was frigid water.