NACHOS OR POPCORN?
A Love Letter to Cinemas
The cinema was always a sort of spiritual place for me my whole life. When I was a kid, going to the movies was always something special for me - my family usually couldn’t afford it. So whenever we managed to save up for a few tickets and a big ol’ bucket of popcorn, it was always like a celebration for me. As much as I hate to remember it, the first film that I got to see in the cinema is the universally-hated 2010 remake of “Alice and Wonderland” by Tim Burton. As mum remembers it, I got so scared we had to leave the cinema about an hour into the film.
As I got older, going to the movies with mum became a more frequent thing. She tried to get time off work and find someone to babysit my little brother so we could watch whatever age-appropriate film was running in cinemas that week. I have to give my mum credit, if it weren’t for her I probably wouldn’t be such a film fanatic right now.
I seriously started getting into the world of movies and filmmaking at the start of high school. After watching so many movie review YouTubers, I decided that it was time to start forming my own opinion about the stuff I watched. So, what did I do? In 2019, I gave myself a challenge - to go to the cinema at least once a week and see whatever movies were on. The first film I saw that year was Julian Schnabel’s “At Eternity’s Gate”. The last, if my memory serves me right, was Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women”. It became a ritual I cherished deeply. Every Friday after school, I’d grab the bus and get to the cheap cinema about half an hour away. A student ticket used to cost 80 hryvnias - around €1.50 by today’s standards. I’d watch whatever was coming up by the time I arrived - unless I had a specific film in mind. Sometimes I’d go two or three times a week to make up for the weeks when I couldn’t go. Looking back at this time, I couldn’t have picked a better year for this kind of thing - in my eyes, 2019 was one of the best years for movies.
In middle school, I struggled to make friends with my classmates. The only time I could really spend time with them outside of class was during our visits to the cinema - every month or so, if a big superhero film or a silly comedy came out, someone would suggest going to see it with the entire class. You can imagine how it would usually go - a hoard of unruly middle school kids cramming together near the ticket booth, arguing about who gets to sit in the middle of the row. It was obviously chaotic, and yet, during these little outings I felt like I was a part of the group.
Nowadays, as an adult living in a country that’s so different and more expensive compared to my home, going to the movies became more of a rarity. I still try my best to get out every now and then - Irish cinemas are amazing for having such a broad selection of films at all times, it’s hard not to be tempted. For me now, it’s a sort of ritual to keep myself grounded - whenever I feel to stressed, overwhelmed, or just straight up sick of people, cinema is my friend. Always has been. It’s a place where I can have my downtime and recollect myself, live a thousand different lives and travel across many worlds.
It’s almost like a second home.