The Cinema Of A Cinema Hall

WHEN THE LIGHTS DIM in a cinema hall, my stomach rumbles with excitement. It's not just the prospect of seeing a new film. It's also the prospect of being seen. It's the social experience of sitting alone, together, without needing to say a word. For these few silent hours of sound, I feel like a film myself. I can be whoever I want to be. I can feel however I want to feel. I can bring my facial muscles out of cold storage. The darkness becomes my ally.

More importantly, I enjoy the thrill of being around strangers. As an introvert, a normal visit to the theatre is no less than a night at a disco. The shiny lights come from the flickering screen. The music is the fiction that controls us. The dancing is the symphony of giggles and sobs and yawns and gasps. We share a stage of intimate reckonings and violent escapes, unburdened by the shackles of image and identity. But I've often wondered: do we truly notice each other?

In my childhood, I nurtured a very specific habit. When my parents took me to the movies, I'd sometimes sit in between them. And I'd wait for the lights to go out. Once the screen sputtered to life, I could only see them from the corner of my eye. Suddenly, they were little more than artful silhouettes. Over the course of the film, then, their faces would stop being theirs. I'd take this opportunity to imagine that they were other people. In my head, they would start to resemble family friends I liked, or better, my favourite heroes and heroines.

Their presence would morph into something stranger and newer. It was my way of temporarily erasing their volatile marriage from my life. I never turned to look at them; I didn't want to risk rupturing the spell and fathoming who they actually were. Once the lights came on, I'd keep this illusion going for as long as I could. It would only last till the first cigarette my dad smoked in the car. Or the first argument they had while walking to our door. Or, if I was lucky, the first sob I'd hear in the middle of the night.

Somehow, this habit has bled deep into my adulthood. Watching movies alone is part of my job. I'm mostly seated in between strangers I might never see again. I don't look at their faces before a film begins. And once the darkness arrives, I allow them to be whoever I want them to be. The other night, while watching a restored print of Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar, the young woman on my left behaved like a distant cousin. She sunk into her seat early on, slowly started reacting to the film, wolfed down a hot dog, and waxed lyrical about Ray's eye for mundane beauty during the interval. In the second hour, I let her morph into a fuller memory of the cousin. It made me smile, as if I were in on a secret nobody else was. I also noticed the guy on my right: he had a beard and big droopy eyes. I saw just about enough of him to imagine that I was sitting next to an old mentor; he audibly gasped at Madhabi Mukherjee's famous reflection shots in the cafe. When his cell-phone fell at my feet, I handed it to him without making eye contact. I preferred the silhouette to the actual person.

A day later, at a press screening of a romantic comedy, I was convinced that I was sitting next to the actress of the film. I let that illusion persist for a while. The scent of her perfume was peculiar. But, how she presumably looked didn't match the way she spoke. At some point, she answered her phone and sounded like a friend's older sister from 25 years ago. I felt a surge of nostalgia for who she was, but also for the nerdy teenager I was in that small city. Once the lights come on, I often flee towards the exit so that I can catch a distant glimpse of these figures before leaving. I try to puncture the fantasy of what they mean to me before I lose perspective of reality. The bearded guy was way younger than I visualised. The non-actress-cum-sister was much older and shorter than I imagined. This movie-going habit is a reflection of life itself. We outgrow relationships and bonds when the projection stops and the lights come on. The side-eyeing ends — and the surreptitious silhouette that sustained our lofty impressions emerges as an unrecognisable face.

On my way home from Mahanagar that night, I thought of how the film subverts this gaze in its distinct social manner. 1950s Calcutta — where conservative ideals jostled with postcolonial hangovers — is both the flickering screen and the translucent hall. Arati, the protagonist, is a reticent homemaker because her seemingly liberal husband only sees her from the corner of his eye. His gaze is so persuasive that she becomes the face he perceives; she is everyone but herself. When she gets a job and tastes what agency feels like, the lights come on. Arati is nothing like the woman he imagined for so long. The clincher, of course, is that the lights stay on and it's the husband who has to adjust his eyesight — and adapt his vision — to the brightness of her potential. They become equals, walking side by side, because she is no longer a projection of his biases. Together, the couple survive the act of being exposed as intimate strangers to each other.

While watching the much-maligned Joker: Folie à Deux some days later, I was taken by the madness of its protagonist, Arthur Fleck. Maybe it was because his identity crisis is fuelled by the fact that 'the joker' — this unhinged villain he thinks he is in the bleakness of his mental cinema hall — is only a blurry silhouette. He can't tell whether the lights are on or off anymore. As I was mulling over the conceit of the narrative, I noticed the seat in front of me. The restless stranger kept sighing every time Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga broke into another musical set piece. He was not pleased.

But there was something about his oval-shaped head and stocky frame. Midway through the film, I heard him chuckle. I knew that sound. Then it hit me. It was my best friend. My chest swelled with anticipation. We hadn't seen each other for two years. Now he was right ahead and didn't even know it. Every time his face threatened to come into view, I aggressively stared back at the screen, choosing to study Fleck's skeletal face instead. I could imagine him nodding off; the air conditioner would do that to us when we bunked afternoon classes and watched movies to escape the heat. Maybe he was dreaming of the day we first met 21 years ago in college. Lectures were called off, we didn't get the memo, so he simply asked — without even knowing my name — if I wanted to go see a film instead. I was instantly attached. That's how it started. That's how it continued. Here we were again, escaping the morning heat on our own terms.

Towards the end of the film, the similarities became uncanny. I noticed his green collared t-shirt. His deodorant got stronger. On screen, Arthur Fleck's delusions started to crack; he could no longer withstand the pressure of his own fiction. His real identity emerged. When the closing credits rolled, I stumbled towards the exit. I passed my friend on the way there; I could swear our sleeves brushed. I did what I usually do when I'm nervous — check my phone. On cue, Google memories revealed a picture of his grave; it was the one I clicked on a recent visit to his hometown. It reminded me of how, at his funeral, it felt like I was watching a movie with the lights on. I put my phone back in my pocket. At the door, as per ritual, I took a deep breath and decided to catch a fantasy-puncturing glimpse. But his back was turned; he was looking for his wallet. I spotted his bald head. Two years on, he looked like he did in the hospital: just a little stronger. I left before he found his wallet. We might see each other at the next screening.