I sank down in to my seat with more anticipation than I had felt in a long time. People began to filter in and sit around me and my wife; some in the rows in front – the VIP rows, that they’d spent £5 more to sit in than I had less than two feet behind them. They did have wide faux leather arm rests though; my arm rests were thin, and covered with a simple blue felt-like material the same as my seat. They would get exactly the same view of the screen as we would, but I bet the superior arm rest gave them a warm feeling inside that I wouldn’t experience.
Spectre was finally here. Truth be told I had descended in
to an obsession with all things 007 since Daniel Craig arrived, but much as I
would love to pontificate, this isn’t the place for thoughts or theories on the
re-booting of the Bond Franchise. Suffice to say I loved Casino Royale, and
thought Skyfall was a masterpiece. I even seemed to enjoy Quantum of Solace
more than most other people on the planet. So I was excited to settle down in
the blue felt seat behind the Very Important People and finally see Spectre in
all her glory.
Except as the house lights went down, something else rose up
inside me. A sickly feeling. A hot face. A slight sense of claustrophobia. I
knew what it was; I was about to come face to face with my own nemesis, my own
Oberhauser, or Blofeld, or whoever Christophe Waltz turned out to be.
The trailers continued to play, with their trademark
machine-gun cutting, as if the editor felt it necessary to include a small
portion of every single camera shot from the entire film. Only all the trailers
were silent. Or at least I thought they were. I could hear people shouting and
I could even pick out the distinctive voice of the man who says ‘Coming soon…!’
in every trailer for every film ever. But it was all muffled, subdued, as if it
was coming from the screen next door, not twenty feet in front of me.
And then it wasn’t subdued any more. Until now, it was as if
I was stood at the dead end of a corridor and I could hear a torrent of rushing
water somewhere close. Now, it was like that scene in the disaster movie when the
water blasts round the corner and our favourite little character is fully
doomed; sounds, colours, fear, all came crashing in, battering my head and
heart, and I thought I was about to die in the dead end of that corridor.
How wonderful, I thought. It’s not like I’ve been waiting to
see this film since the morning I sat like a goggle-eyed child watching the
initial press launch. Why did it have to happen now? Why couldn’t it have
happened when I was dragged along to watch the fifteenth instalment of the
Hunger Games? Then I would have been glad to have something else to deal with.*
Anyway, the hot face continued, the sick-feeling got worse,
and the walls of the cinema felt like they were an inch from my face and about
to squeeze the life out of me. I remembered vividly the episode in the office almost
a year ago, now if I didn’t get out of this cinema right now, I knew I would die.
Except I didn’t die. I couldn’t die just then. I was here to
see Spectre, and I’d paid a monstrous £10.99 for my little felt seat. I took
deep breaths; I relaxed every part of my body and told myself I would survive.
Everything told me that I wouldn’t be alright, I would certainly die any
moment, but I kept telling myself I would survive.
‘It’s a panic attack’, I kept saying. You remember these
from before. You haven’t died from one before, and you’re not going to die from
one now. Besides, there is popcorn, you like popcorn. Stay alive for the
popcorn.
As much as I told myself this, and as much as I sucked in
the stale oxygen that lingered in Screen 8 of the Vue cinema, I honestly didn’t
think I would come out the other side alive. But as the trailers finished and
007’s latest adventure opened to the sound of beating drums in a glorious four
and half minute non-stop tracking shot through the streets Mexico, everything
faded and melted away. After ten minutes of total unbearable fear and certain
death, as quickly as it had come, it had gone. I was back to being a normal,
non-panicking human.
And what of Spectre? Well, it was a shame that the majestic
opening shot was the best – possibly the only good – part of the film. The most
disappointing thing was that my silent and terrifying panic attack in a cinema
full of people was the most intense part of the whole evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment