Is cinema done for too? Like pubs? With big screens available in the home and all those streaming services, not to mention dodgy boxes with latest movie releases, why bother the wind and the rain by venturing forth into that good night?
Recently, and not having a dodgy box (it’s not easy being virtuous), I did indeed venture forth, twice, to see the films Nuremberg (good) and Saipan (poor). The once thriving complex was almost deserted and cried out for a makeover, with one or two young staff attending to the few of us who had decided not to sit in that night. The place exuded dust and defeat.
In the (cold) cinema there were five for Nuremberg and six for Saipan. All of us in our latter decades.
Back in my increasingly dim youth, I remember going to see the hugely popular film Love Story in Dublin’s Ambassador cinema. There was hardly room to breathe in that vast space packed to the gills as we enjoyed the communal experience of watching Aly McGraw die beautifully while a grief-stricken Ryan O’Neal wept for us all.
Well, almost all. At the most heartbreaking moment, when he lies on the bed alongside her as she expires – milking every available emotion from the grief-worn audience – someone at the back began to laugh.
[ Paper Moon and Love Story star Ryan O’Neal dies aged 82Opens in new window ]
It spread like fire. Soon, the entire cinema was convulsed. It felt hysterical but I like to think people just saw through how they were being manipulated, even by Ali McGraw.
It wouldn’t happen now. The Ambassador hasn’t been a cinema for years and few in Ireland could accommodate such huge audiences.
Where are we going with all this? In the past 20 years more than 2,000 pubs (almost a quarter) have closed in Ireland, with an average of 112 closures per year. Limerick had the biggest drop at 37 per cent, with Offaly at 34 per cent, Cork, Roscommon, and Tipperary at 32 per cent, Laois, Longford and Westmeath at over 30 per cent.
[ Arresting the decline of the rural pubOpens in new window ]
Meanwhile, upwards of 1,000 more pubs are expected to close in the coming decade.
Add in remote working, and what we are talking about is a major retreat from public spaces to the home. By any reckoning that is not healthy.
We could end up killing one another.
Retreat, from Latin retrahere, “to withdraw”.