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The sideshow

Movie watching is a social event and there's more drama in the aisles

The audience in a cinema demanded — and got — the last part of an Ajit movie repeated. No, it didn't occur to them to pay for it. Elsewhere a theatre manager refused the same demand and had to spend on a new screen. During the first show of a Rajnikanth comeback movie, the crowd in the audience got in the aisles and danced. Catcalls, whistles, sing-alongs, dance-alongs, dialogue-alongs, comments, and oohs and aahs are "free gifts" that come with your movie ticket.

The hordes

Try telling the 18 to 25-year-old hordes that fill movie halls that you go to the theatre to commune with cinematic art. To absorb the nuances in the layers of plots, emotions, camera work, background sounds, technical details and acting. To be touched by the director's hopefully fresh way of telling a story. And to do all this you need silence among the seats and comfort in the seating. The response:get real ma'am. Are we expected to freeze when we pay good money to get in?

But why would I listen to you talk back to the characters? Put up with eating sounds that belong in a farmyard? Why must I put up with some kid kicking the back of my seat for three hours straight, have a pro basketball team in front blocking my view and hearing, tolerate a whining toddler, and why is he watching something even grown men would think twice about? The show outside is as dramatic. "We go to the theatres to be together," say Sandhya and Krithika, MBA students. "We frequent places our parents approve of. We prepare. We read up on the movie, buy audiocassettes and learn the lyrics. It's a feather in our cap if we can sing along."

And yes, they did clap, quite loudly, when Aamir appeared in Rang de Basanthi. "I can't sit calm. I need to comment when all is quiet," appeals Sandhya. Exactly what she did throughout Gothika. There are cinemas and cinemas. One group of engineering students sounds polite, wish to open an orphanage, but break into theatre antics once the lights dim. Its metamorphosis is characterised by constant whistling. "It's entertainment. We make chorus noises. In fight scenes we provide background thuds. In steamy scenes, you can hear clear smooching sounds in the darkness." Sniffs Ms. Pillai: "Once I heard a row of girls screech and instinctively pulled up my feet before I realised they were welcoming Tom Cruise."

New culture

It's the new theatre culture. Behaviour benchmarks have been redrawn. Making noise is allowed, accepted. Everyone does it. Dance sequences are included specifically for audience participation. Only documentaries are without songs, group dances and punch lines, young India sneers.

Maybe the rental market is responsible. People are so accustomed to watching movies at home that they've forgotten how to behave in a public place.

GEETA PADMANABHAN

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