coming reel soon

Eastern Promises

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Preserve Me a Seat

Documentary filmmaker Jim Fields belongs to the huge but dwindling throng of moviegoers who learned too late that the real magic of cinema extends beyond the flickering image on the screen.  For several generations during the 20^th century it was the theatre experience itself that provided more than a little of the allure of a movie evening.  Not to blame Fields for the demise of elegance in this universally popular pastime, nor any one of the over-40 crowd whose youth was spent queuing up on the street, rain or shine, in front of the little glass box office at theatres all across hometown America.  Like the sweet, soft dimples in a small child’s hand, one day you notice that they are gone, but you can’t remember seeing them fade until they have disappeared altogether.

Unique movie venues, from extravagantly exotic downtown palaces, to art deco neighborhood gems, to one-function Cinerama theaters (with screens specially built for the handful of movies produced in the ultra wide format), have all but vanished from the land.  Fields’ feature length documentary is part of a series playing September 14 and 15 at the historic Portage Theatre in Chicago.  The entire series is devoted to a celebration of what once was, and to the desperate struggle to save decaying movie theatres from the wrecking ball.  He focuses on four theatres. The centerpiece is the Indian Hills Theatre in Omaha, Nebraska.  Built in 1962, and although not a particularly remarkable looking structure from the outside, when it closed in 2000, folks rallied to breathe life back into the place.

Unfortunately, efforts to save the Indian Hills came too little too late and became newsworthy only when the building was about to face the bulldozer.  The film details the sad campaign of a theatre preservation group to gather grass roots support and prevent the Indian Hills from being paved over for a parking lot.  The Gaiety in Boston and the massive Michigan Theatre in Detroit faced similar ignominious endings, though the Michigan did enjoy recent notoriety as the location for some memorable scenes in the film 8 Mile. Fields’ fourth subject is The Villa in Salt Lake City as it morphs lovingly but grotesquely into something else altogether.  

The bottom line is, well, the bottom line that determined the fate of most of the single screen theatres.  An unsentimental assessment is that they were born to make a buck by drawing in the crowd and they died when the crowd was lured away to boring, cookie cutter multiplex theaters with cup holders and comfortable seating. Fields’ film is not this unsentimental assessment.  It takes a stab at being fair to business realties but he clearly mourns for the ruined behemoths of the golden age of movies.

Fields devotes a bit too much screen time to the 21st century squabbles between the opposing forces of the theatre preservationists vs. the corporate machine.  Though not as visually compelling as the similarly themed Cinerama Adventure, those movie buffs among us who’ve known the dreamy romance of having our favorite theater, our favorite seats in that theatre and fond memories of theatres long gone, are grateful to Fields for attempting to document a powerful emotional bond that younger audiences can never know.

While most of us weren’t paying much attention, multi-screen complexes were popping up offering not a gracious ornate lobby and a ladies room with a luxurious mirrored lounge, but acres of free parking instead.  About the same time the interiors of local neighborhood theatres were being chopped up into three or four smaller screening spaces, and video swept into our lives.  Thousands of these 20^th century icons unceremoniously closed their doors.  One day you drove by and noticed with a pang that the theatre of your youth was gone or the building converted to store fronts.

For a touching emotional immersion into the last hurrah that might have come before the padlocks went on the doors for the last time, check out the Taiwanese feature film Good-bye Dragon Inn, about the final day in the life of an old movie theatre.  See it on a triple bill on your own big screen at home along with Preserve Me a Seat and The Corporation.

                                  Shelley Cameron © 2007

Bubble

Since almost everything has been done before in film, it’s sometimes enough for a movie to simply recombine old elements in novel ways (this is one of the things Quentin Tarantino is most known for).  

The Bubble takes a fresh approach to old genre patterns and successfully combines seemingly disparate elements. It starts out as a sitcom style comedy about gay culture (like an Israeli “Will and Grace”) and it ends as a moving tragedy/political commentary film. The two parts actually go together rather well, and the film shows how lives can change on the turn of a dime. 

The title comes from an area in Tel Aviv, where the young people live a very hip, modern, urban lifestyle (without the language difference you could almost mistake them for city dwelling American hipsters). 

There’s even a great scene where a hipper-than-thou record clerk mortifies a hapless teen-age girl who has the audacity to ask for a Britney Spears recording in the trendy record store where he works. The scene would’ve fit right into the film High Fidelity. 

Depiction of the collision between Arab and Jewish culture is consistently fascinating in The Bubble, and the well-chosen cast creates fleshed out, thoroughly modern characters. 

The film begins with a shocking scene at a checkpoint, which captures the day to day chaos in war-torn Tel Aviv. A pregnant mother is detained on the way to the hospital too long, and this has tragic consequences.  

But a Jewish man named Noam (Ohad Knoller) also attracts the eye of an Arab named Ashraf (Yousef Sweid) at a check point and the two eventually begin a steamy and mutually fulfilling relationship (the film is often tastefully sexually explicit). Of course, a member of one of the men’s family and other obstacles get in the way of their bliss. 

Noam also has two roommates: a straight woman named Lulu and a flamboyant gay man named Yali (he’s dating a macho military man). The three of them try to resist the bitter ethnic violence, and they participate in a rave for peace (with posters depicting the flags of both warring sides).  

But the world and the political climate ultimately conspire against the characters’ happiness.   

Some viewers may question the characters’ abrupt psychological shifts at the end, but in extreme moments any one can have a sudden change of heart. The Bubble is a rich and witty cross-cultural romp that always manages to be familiar yet unique.