/ 9 May 2005

Cinema Purgatorio

Stephen Fry has perfected the persona of walking anachronism. In his enormous frame, the Englishman combines the ponderous authority and formally cavalier erudition that Anglophile myth insists formed the unshakeable foundations of the Empire; and so it seemed that if anyone had the pedigree to make a decent film of an Evelyn Waugh novel, it was he.

Stephen Fry has perfected the persona of walking anachronism. In his enormous frame, the Englishman combines the ponderous authority and formally cavalier erudition that Anglophile myth insists formed the unshakeable foundations of the Empire; and so it seemed that if anyone had the pedigree to make a decent film of an Evelyn Waugh novel, it was he.

As it transpired, it was not he. Bright Young Things was lovely to look at, and fairly amusing, but it bore the sort of resemblance to Waugh’s original Vile Bodies that Black Adder shares with All Quiet on the Western Front.

However, had Mr Waugh materialised next to me and spent 90 minutes slapping his thigh in glee and extolling Fry’s virtuosity, I would still have failed to see the film’s merit. In fact, given the black pit of rage and despair in which I was trapped, and given the reason for my being there, I may well have clobbered him on the spot.

There are torments far more horrible than being stuck in a cinema near a talker. They say having your toenails pulled out is fairly nasty. But the agony of those deafening mutters in the dark, those fabulously dimwitted observations about plot, lies in knowing that one’s objections will not be understood. The toenail-puller knows he is being wicked, the toenail-pullee’s protests are understood, if ignored. The film talker is oblivious, ensconced in a bubble of vanity in which only his pleasure is meaningful.

Perhaps hoping to inspire his spawn, the bloke in the next row had brought his two children to Bright Young Things. One can only assume he thought it was a Disney musical about teenaged fireflies. Or maybe he couldn’t find a babysitter. But whatever the case, he endeavoured to explain every line of dialogue (of which there were perhaps 13-million), revealing himself to be a firm believer in current parenting theories; the ones that point out that, until they turn 21, children should not be exposed to tricky things like plots, characters, ideas and words with Latin roots.

Of course we’ve all had worse. I know I have. The hormone-crazed whelp with his lazer-pointer in The Two Towers, tracing epilepsy-inducing zigzags for three hours; the pair of teenaged harpies convulsing with feigned lust over Orlando Bloom and cranking out laboured giggles over the sheer joy of being young, pretty and vacuous; melanoma-ravaged Eurotrash taking 15 minutes to discuss the moustache of the Vietnamese general in The Lady Killers (‘Ach so! Look, guy, it’s like Hitler! Hitler? Ja, Hitler! Aw haw haw! Look at the moostush! Jeeeesus, guy!”); the cretin herding his buttocks past one’s face and lowing into a cellphone, ‘Sorry bru, no bugger, it’s cool, I’m just watching a movie.”

Humanists and socialists have pointed out, helpfully and optimistically, that the evaporation of civic awareness might suggest a gap in the market for a cinema catering exclusively for people able to sit still and silently for two hours. Already such projects have started in London and New York — some even feature seats widely spaced, to bathe the watcher in blissful, dark isolation — but their financial feasibility is apparently still in doubt.

All the more reason why it’s time we took back our cinemas. Why should decent, soft-spoken people be herded into overpriced ghettoes because they’re able to read subtitles without moving their lips?

Last month a reader accused this magazine of being class-ridden. I agree entirely: working-class values are insinuating themselves everywhere and should be ruthlessly stamped out wherever they are encountered. But it’s no use simply levelling the traditional middle-class weapons of complaint and conjecture at the scourge in our theatres. It’s time to get upper-class on their ass. And none of your middle-class liberal outrage, thanks. Let he who has not thought about horsewhipping the film-whisperer cast the first stone. And make it a big jagged one. Then the rest of us can pile in with antique pikes and umbrellas.

But seriously, hasn’t the time come to consider sound-activated blowtorches in theatre seats? Voice-triggered demolition balls released from ceiling trapdoors? I mean if you’re going to do something, do it properly. And yes, Mr Fry, that also applies to making films —