I went to the NFT to watch Ace in the Hole on Friday. What can I say? A movie about a cynical reporter – how could I resist, even if it did had the most implausible scissor-wound in movie history? But there’s something I want to share with you.
The NFT audience is filled with some strange people. Sure, it’s mostly packed with perfectly innocent cinephiles. But there was a different kind of person there as well…
The chattering classes were there. I’m talking about:
- People who bring thermoses of tea and picnic blankets with them when they go to see Sense and Sensibility.
- People who think The English Patient was a good film, that Ralph Fiennes’ character wasn’t a boorish moron and that talk about “the super-sternal notch” on a woman’s neck is romantic.
- People who act like English teachers (to paraphrase Nick Hancock) who take their classes on school trips to see Macbeth and then go “Ha” and slap their thighs when the gravedigger says something funny.
During this particular movie, said chattering classes laughed uproariously at every single joke, no matter how slight. I’m not talking about regular laughs, either. These were odd. “Ha, ha, ha, ha!” I’m not being onomatopoeic here. You could hear every letter. And for people who object to “youths” talking during movies, they weren’t half a bunch of gasbags.
They irritated me something chronic and ruined a perfectly good cinema experience. Is there some way to get them banned? Surely there must be.
