We went to the cinema last week to watch Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, showing at Century Cinemax in the Junction Mall.
We had the company of only five others – a young couple who, understandably, went to the back row seats, and three teenage girls in one of the front rows. This wasn’t surprising, because it was the 4pm screening on a Thursday afternoon.
I hadn’t been to a movie theatre for a number of years. My film-watching has been at home and via Netflix and YouTube. I felt out of touch as we climbed the stairs, entered the plush foyer and looked around to see which screen was having the Indiana Jones film. I was also surprised when we were handed huge bags of warm popcorn as I paid for the tickets.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is rather like what Shakespeare’s overwhelmed and distraught Macbeth says of life: ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.’ Not that I am saying the scriptwriter and director of the film are idiots, but what they have crafted is a fantasy plot with unbelievable actions and full of pyrotechnics.
In a tale told about a prolonged struggle with a group of Nazis for possession of an ancient dial that could transport you back through time, there is little more than sound and fury.
But if you are stirred by car chases through narrow streets, fist fights on the top of a fast-moving train, and pushing opponents through the door of an out-of-control aeroplane, then you can say you have enjoyed rich entertainment. For myself, I was disappointed that there were no scenes like the famous one in the first of the Indiana Jones films. It was the scene where he is confronted by a dervish-like swordsman. Instead of using his whip to get the sword out of the attackers' hands, he calmly takes out his revolver and shoots him. It’s deadpan humour at its best.
With the challenge of online streaming of films you can watch at home on channels such as Netflix and YouTube, the question that is often asked these days is, will cinemas survive? Certainly, they are not thriving at all like they did when I was a youngster in the United Kingdom. There was little TV then. (My parents bought our first TV set to watch the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II – in black and white.)
Along with news broadcasts, we listened to comedy series on the radio, like Hancock’s Half Hour and The Goons. In the small market town of Boston (the original one) where I grew up, there were two cinemas – the Odeon and the Regal. My picks for the films they showed in the 1950s and 1960s are a romance, Gone with the Wind; a Western, The Big Country; a musical, Singin’ in the Rain; a courtroom drama, 12 Angry Men.
In Kenya, in addition to Bollywood films, it seems that the staple offerings in our cinemas are action films. All three of the trailers at Century Cinemax last Thursday were action movies – full of fights, chases and explosions.
It’s true that such films need the big screen for their actions and their sounds to be really effective. They don’t work at all well on TVs or computer screens. On a recent flight back from the UK, I watched the aerial combat film, Top Gun Maverick – clearly a film that needs a big screen and wrap-around sound.
However, I wish the choice of films for our Kenya cinemas could be more eclectic. This morning, I read a review of a relatively low-budget film about child trafficking in Columbia – the controversial and thought-provoking, Sound of Freedom, which is proving to be something of a hit in the States. It would be a pity not to see it in our cinemas here.
