The first places that I go to (to learn about a place) are museums and cultural heritages. Then I would visit the beach, the lakes or the mountains to do some outdoor activities. And finally, I would go out to eat local food in restaurants, go shopping in street markets or malls, and then to the bars or pubs to hang out with some locals. It never occurred to me to go to the cinema for a cultural experience until yesterday.
Yesterday, Ben and I went to a local cinema to watch Sherlock Holmes. Like everything else in the Turks & Caicos, it was a 5-minute drive from our place. Located in a small building, the cinema showed only three movies at a time. That evening. it was showing Avatar, The Princess and the Frog and Sherlock Holmes. We both wanted to watch Avatar, but decided not to see it until we get back home where we could watch it in 3D. We heard Sherlock Holmes was good too so that was the next best thing.
Considering the condition of the place, I was surprised that the movie cost us $12 each, which was how much it costs us to watch a movie at the Cineplex theatres in Vancouver. The seats were extremely uncomfortable, the screen was a bit run down and the sound system was awful. I could barely understand anything. It was a familiar reminder of my Philippine movie experiences, so none of it really bothered me. What bothered me were the other patrons.
Unlike in Canada, people here waltzed into the movie late. Instead of tiptoeing quietly into their seats, they would take their time walking across the aisles (thereby blocking your view) and say "excuse me" so loudly that you could barely hear the movie at all. Not only that, they put their feet up on the seats in front of them, they talked during the entire movie and they even answered their cellphones! And the most annoying of them all was this guy in front of us who yelled his comments throughout the movie. He'd yell "boom" or "pow" or "yeah" like an idiot who thinks he's in his own living room.
I was beginning to think that the locals did not have any movie etiquette whatsoever. The ironic thing was, when the movie ended and the lights were turned on, I saw and realized that everyone in the theatre were not locals but rather tourists from all over the world. So I erased any previous conclusions I made and decided that everybody from everywhere have different movie-watching methods. There is the quiet i-am-so-into-the-movie-so-please-don't-talk-to-me type (I think I fall under this category). There is the loud i-think-i-can-help-james-cameron-with-my-own-sound-effects type. There is the I-need-to-pee-every-15-minutes type. There is the annoying i-need-to-discuss-this-scene-right-now type. And so on and so forth.
I decided that the cinema experience is truly different from place to place. The culture generally dictates how people act inside the cinema. If they set certain rules, people have guidelines to follow. For instance, if the cinema doesn't allow people to enter a movie after it has started, people would actually come early. I realized that I have taken for granted those nice Canadians who, in general, respect rules and respect people. They like order and organization. You can tell not just by how they watch a movie, but also by how they obey traffic laws and public etiquette. They are, by nature, very nice people. You only realize it when you are placed in a different environment and you get to see some contrasts.
