It’s a wet Sunday afternoon and I’ve come to a luxury cinema to see The Brutalist. I know it’s a long film, so I’ve chosen this comfortable location, and I’ve eaten my snacks while the adverts played, and I’m cosy and settled in for the hours ahead.
The lights dim and the film begins. Up on the screen Adrien Brody – of The Pianist fame, here playing a tormented architect – appears in the darkness. There’s a feeling of tension and anxiety, and I’m peering through the gloom trying to make sense of this opening scene. At that moment an usher arrives with a large burger and fries for the man next to me. I can hear the man trying to work out how to eat said large burger and fries in the dark. I can also hear him munching. I carry on squinting at the screen.
The man whispers to his wife, “I just can’t manage any more. So much food.” He leans over to me. “Would you like some fries?” I’m not sure I want to finish the fries of a complete stranger, who has had his hand in and out of the paper bag and in and out of his mouth. “No, I’m fine, thanks,” I murmur, and force my attention back to the film. Two hours pass, then there is an interval.
I order a cup of tea. Everyone else orders something too. Then we queue for the loo and rush back to our seats as the film restarts. We are back in darkness, only this time Adrien Brody and his wife, played by Felicity Jones, are in bed trying to have sex. The usher hands me a cup of tea. Then he reappears with two more cups of tea, which I assume are for the couple next to me, so I pass them along. The sex is proving a bit unsatisfactory, and things are being said which I can’t hear. “We only ordered one cup,” says my neighbour, handing one back to me which I duly hand to the usher.
Mere seconds pass, and the usher is back – this time with a pizza. It’s for the middle of the row so, apologetically, he climbs over me, and my neighbours, while I crane my neck to look around him at the screen, where the sex is still not going well. The usher climbs back over me still clutching the pizza, and at this point I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the utter ridiculousness of the situation.
From the things I’ve read I get the impression that the director, Brady Corbet, takes this film of his pretty seriously, and I don’t imagine it was his dream to have us view it in a busy restaurant. I come out of the cinema with mixed feelings, awed by much of the film, frustrated by the viewing circumstances.
Continuing in the Oscar-nominated theme, the following night I’m at a show called A Complete Unknown. Only it’s not the Timothée Chalamet film (which I’ve seen and loved), it’s a gig at the Moth Club in Hackney, featuring young performers doing Bob Dylan songs.
First up, Nina Winder-Lind and her band rattle through some punky, garage-band versions of songs from Blonde on Blonde. Then we get the “acoustic Dylan”, with Clara Mann and Spitzer Space Telescope performing “It Ain’t Me Babe”, channelling the spirits of Joan Baez and Dylan before our very eyes, and then wowing us with “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, “Who Killed Davey Moore?” and “Hard Rain”.
Finally, Brown Horse appear with a set of the electric stuff. To my delight, they open with “Like a Rolling Stone”, that organ riff screaming out into the room, the whole crowd singing along, and it’s a real moment of communal euphoria. As they finish, someone dutifully calls out “Judas!” and someone dutifully replies, “I don’t believe you.”
I’m there with our 23-year-old, and most of those in the crowd are closer to his age than mine, which is also delightful. I walk out into the Hackney rain to get the train home, thinking of the two crowd experiences I’ve had in the last 24 hours, and how they couldn’t have been more different. And I think on balance I’d rather hear an audience singing than eating.
[See also: The Seventies kitchen re-revolution]
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This article appears in the 05 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The New Gods of AI