Movie theaters are the same, but so are some fans

(Photo: Dan Webster)

After nearly a full year, my wife and I broke down and finally went to the movies.

It was on Monday night, and the movie we saw was “The Father.” Directed by the French filmmaker Florian Zeller, and adapted by Zeller from his play “Le Père,” the movie stars Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman.

I’ll post a review of the film at a later date. For now, I’ll just say that if I had seen it last year it would definitely have made my Top 10 list. It’s that good – intense and emotionally challenging, but good.

Of course, you would expect that, buoyed as it is by the performances of two past Academy Award winners, both of whom have been nominated again – Hopkins as Best Actor, Colman as Best Supporting Actress.

What I want to talk about here, though, was the moviegoing experience.

In many ways, it was the same as it ever was. We had no problem buying our tickets online. Parking on the street was no problem either, though we did have to walk a couple of blocks.

The young woman who checked my virtual ticket stub (the proof of purchase was on my phone) was polite, and she cheerfully pointed the way to the theater in which our movie would be screening. She was dutifully masked, too, as were we.

And like most stores these days, the theater provided containers of sanitizing wipes, which we used to wipe down the arms of our respective seats.

So most, if not all, of our COVID-19 concerns were taken care of. And though the movie proved to be a trying emotional experience, that in itself is why we watch movies in the first place – to be moved by what we see onscreen.

Still … it didn’t take long for us to be reminded why we’d so enjoyed watching movies for the past year in the comfort of our own living room. Why? To be specific, the other people in the theater.

There were only three of them, but they made their presences felt. A couple sat together a couple of rows below us, and they chatted on and off throughout the movie. The man’s voice, while not particularly loud, was a low rumble that carried throughout the mostly empty theater.

We saw only the signs of the other moviegoer – I don’t recall the person’s gender – when we left: a mass of peanut shells littered on the floor, other garbage left strewn both on the seat and stuffed into the seat’s drink well.

It’s not as if I hadn’t experienced all of this before. (I can’t even say with good conscience that I’ve not made noise on occasion or not left a mess behind for theater employees to pick up.)

So despite everything, as a confirmed movie fan I’ll no doubt be back. It’s just that this experience, one that we’d waited so long for, wasn’t exactly the joyful reunion that either my wife or I had hoped for.

We aren’t alone in our feelings either. Later that night, I described what had happened on a Facebook post, and I received a number of reactions. My favorite was from a former Spokesman-Review colleague.

“One of my first jobs was sweeping up at my family’s movie theater on Orcas and this kinda (profanity deleted) behavior has been going on for a mighty long time!!!” she wrote.

“PEOPLE!!!!” she added. “Am I right???”

Sad to say, but … pretty much.