I don’t think I’d been to the Augusta multiplex for three years. There are several reasons why my husband, Paul, and I prefer to trek to Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville.
They screen the types of films we want to see. They make interesting snacks available, including coffee. They are a positive influence in their community and in the cultural life of Maine as a whole.
Perhaps most importantly, the people who go to see movies at Railroad Square are more apt to be interested in film as an art form, rather than just an entertainment opportunity. Thus, they are quiet and attentive not only through the show, but while the trailers are playing.
My father, Ray, is rolling in his grave at this point. He was a happy-go-lucky teenager who loved to play baseball; bright, but not interested in applying himself in school. Dad was the third of four children, swarthy and with a head of curly black hair. In both looks and personality, Ray favored his father’s brother Mann — a Brazilian immigrant who ironically played for an amateur soccer team called the “Corky Rows,” which took its name from the Irish section of town.
Ray’s younger brother, by contrast, took after the Québécois side of the family, with his pale skin and fair hair. Arthur was a talented basketball player and artist. Though only two years younger than my Dad, he hung out with a bohemian crowd. Ray and Arch managed to get into plenty of boyish trouble together, but Dad disdained his brother’s artsy friends. Once, Dad said to me in disgust, “After they watched movies, they discussed them! Took them apart!”
He probably told me that after I tried to analyze a film with him. Or maybe when I was doing an independent study project in my high school English class on “Popular Books and Movies of the 1930s and 1940s.” Whatever prompted the comment, it was too late. Just as Dad had inherited Uncle Manuel’s devil-may-care spirit, I carried the DNA that made me want to deconstruct books, films, music and works of visual art.
Dad was not a philistine. He was an avid reader who loved travel and music. (He had my sister and me take organ lessons so we could have live music in the house.) And he did not talk through movies.
That nasty habit, dear readers, seems to have become more of a problem these days. I was apprehensive when Paul and I ventured out to the multiplex to see “Manchester by the Sea.” I would much rather have seen this heartbreaking, gorgeously filmed and acted movie at Railroad Square, but alas, their matinees were at an inconvenient time for us. (We rarely venture out at night.) I was surprised to see a movie of this caliber playing at the multiplex, but there it was.
Now, there is one more problem I haven’t mentioned about this particular cinema.
It has reclining seats for its sometimes gabby clientele.
I don’t think we should recline in public unless we’re on a beach. Yesterday it became acceptable to wear pajama pants in public, today it’s cool to recline in public. How lazy can we get?
I wondered if I would fall asleep if I reclined. I especially worried that my fellow moviegoers would interpret reclining as an invitation to chat throughout the movie, as they likely do at home.
I was relieved to see that the seats were high enough and spaced widely enough so that I didn’t feel too cozy with anyone except Paul. We chose to sit upright, however. We weren’t going down that slippery slope.
Sure enough, two women chatted behind us. I tried to ignore them through the trailers, but at one point they got so loud that I peered back and gave them a sharp look. They stopped for a moment, then started right back up again. I will note they were both reclining and stuffing their faces with popcorn.
A few minutes later, Paul tried with a stern, “Could you please be quiet?” They said “Huh?”
I panicked. If they would not quiet down, I was going to storm out to the lobby and demand my money back.
Then I remembered I had a secret weapon. As the movie began, they were still yapping. I stuck my face around the seat again and said “Shush!”
I’m a professional librarian. I know how to shush. Ironically, libraries aren’t the silent vaults they once were. But movie theaters ought to be.
And for the rest of “Manchester by the Sea,” this multiplex theater was.
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