For a while, movie theaters were getting better. After decades in which the grand palaces were either allowed to run down into rot or torn down entirely, while new venues were slapped together in strip malls and configured in odd and distressing shapes, companies like Cineplex Odeon and National Amusements went on building sprees. They designed lavish multiplexes with beautiful lobbies, decent sound systems, and chairs that rocked.
Building led to overbuilding. The Second Golden Age of the Movie Palace came to an end in 2005. And now, 20 years after the beginning of the construction boom, there are signs of creeping decrepitude. Screens are fraying and graying. Comfortable seats are lumpy and getting lumpier. The sound, once crisp, is now merely loud.
Theater owners trumpet the arrival of digital projection to lure customers, but it turns out that digital projection is more valuable for the industry than it is for the viewer. Studios will not have to produce costly prints on film, which is nice for them, but the picture on display is nowhere near as sharp.
So what is a movie watcher to do? The obvious answer is to stay home, where the qualitative improvements–plasma and LCD televisions up to eight feet wide, with remarkable sound and picture–are far more transformative than the changes to theaters. But if one is not at home, and is tired of getting seasick in a broken movie theater rocker, there is the third option, and the only one that is entirely new. Call it portable moviegoing.
I have spent the last two years watching movies on treadmills and Stairmasters, subways and buses, and in a queue at the Motor Vehicles Bureau or an airport security line on a video iPod I received as a birthday present from my wife. At the time the device made its debut, it was the subject of loud howls from cinéastes and movie directors, who described it as the death of cinema. Moviemakers labor for hours to get the look of a scene exactly right, and all that effort would surely be lost at a width of two inches and a height of an inch-and-a-half.
And it is. But the lack of visual scale certainly did not prevent those of us who grew up watching black-and-white televisions, the smaller versions of which had screens five inches in diagonal and the broadcast quality of whose images was often wretched, from falling in love with movies. We did not have a color television in our house until 1970, which meant that before then I had no idea, during the five times I saw The Wizard of Oz in its annual broadcast, that Kansas was in black-and-white while Oz was in color. Which did not save me from suffering through flying-monkey nightmares, or my siblings from suffering through my pained efforts to mimic the dulcet sounds of the Lollipop Guild.
The iPod is vastly superior to the old portable black-and-white television, needless to say. The sound is extraordinary and the picture is beautiful to look at. (I gather the picture is better and larger on the iPhone.) As always, what matters most is not the peripheral issues of a film–the color palette of its cinematography, the whizbang special effects, the editing–but the essentials of story, character, and dialogue. If those work, the movie works, at 40 feet wide or at two inches wide.
What is defiantly peculiar about the experience of watching a movie on the iPod has far less to do with the minuscule size of the screen than the fact that one rarely watches it from a fixed vantage point. The iPod is something one carries, after all, and that means even in the time it takes for a blink or a quick eye rub, the background will shift, even a tiny bit. That can pull you out of the story you’re watching. The peerless advantage of watching a movie in a dark theater is that, assuming there isn’t a teenager texting right next to you, there is nothing extraneous to distract your attention.
Which brings up an odd advantage. Say you’re watching a bad or boring movie on a subway train, a movie you nonetheless want to get to the end of. A distraction or two is not a bad thing; the movie turns into a radio show for a moment as you survey the other passengers. And if a homeless guy comes through asking you to help him in the name of Jesus, you can turn right back to the iPod, confident he will pass you by.
If, on the other hand, you’re watching McLintock!, a revolting 1963 Western comedy in which, for the 85th time in their sorry careers, John Wayne saves his difficult marriage to Maureen O’Hara by taking her over his knee and giving her a good spanking, you will only wish, as I did, that the screen were the size of a subatomic particle.
John Podhoretz, editorial director of Commentary, is THE WEEKLY STANDARD‘s movie critic.
