Why I love … watching movies on planes
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http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/sep/23/why-i-love-watching-movies-on-planes Version 0 of 1. Thirty thousand feet up, you are both God and ant. You survey the world beneath you as minions bring booze and curious food. And yet you have no control over your own fate. You can't exit, you can't turn back, you can't scream (well, it's frowned upon). You are a hostage, at the mercy of others for everything, and without means of communicating with anyone below (OK, I know some flights now offer wifi, but it's scattershot and quite pricey.) That lack of choice, that waiver of personal responsibility, is why I love long-haul flights, and why, especially, I love watching movies on them. Right now, at my desk, I could with a few clicks see pretty much anything I want. Such a glut is great; it's also overwhelming. Submitting yourself to the whim of any programmer – at your local cinema, on telly – is often much more rewarding. And the programmers who work for airlines are governed by rules and regulations, personal tastes and windows of distribution I can only dream of. Even just scrolling through the lists of what Air Canada considers avant garde (Before Midnight), contemporary (Galaxy Quest) or a new release (Star Trek: Into Darkness) is an entertainment in itself. More than that, I'd argue that watching films in these conditions is the purest hit you can get: mainlining movies straight into your brain, unfiltered by environmental factors. OK, there may be seven people standing next to you, queueing for the loo, but you are watching this one solo. There is no friend or partner with whom to confer, no vexing stranger munching popcorn, no professional-critic colleague sighing extravagantly at the boring bits. Unlike at home, there is none of your own clobber around you; unlike on the tube, you're in this for the duration. Extreme conditions for the viewer, then. And for a film itself, being screened on a plane is boot camp. Those fussy directorial edicts about aspect ratio and surround sound and immersing yourself in the Imax go straight out the window. This is take-no-prisoners projection. If a film can't cope with being squashed to the size of a sandwich, viewed through a veil of greasy fingerprints, randomly chopped, spliced with beeps and meals, safety announcements and sudden drops in altitude – well, it has no place on a plane. It is, it has to be said, a pretty specific pleasure. There is no joy, for instance, in the old-school set-up of a few screens, dotted around the cabin, and the option of headphones. That's like being trapped in a rubbish cinema: too little choice, conditions too compromised. It needs to be a plane, though: I took a train from Barcelona to Madrid and every carriage showed, communal style, Are We There Yet?. It was a long train trip, and an expensive ticket. But if Ice Cube dubbed in Spanish had become too much, I could have simply got off. The other great boon, of course, is that while it's rude to rubberneck at what the commuter wedged next to you is watching, on a plane it's par for the course. Pop to the bathroom and as you return, you have no choice but be confronted with an instant snapshot of movie-viewing trends, with the chance to make snap judgments on the taste of your fellow travellers. For me, though, it's finally all about that heady thrill of watching movies in a virtual vacuum. You can abdicate critical judgment, and consequence. You can binge guilt free. That's why I watched The Muppets three times going to the States last spring. And, to a very real extent, it was the highlight of the trip. • More from Why I Love … Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |