December 8 - THE WALK by Robert Zemeckis (USA) @ Kino Evald (Prague, Czech Republic), 14:30
Love a good old matinee experience at the local flicks, and EVALD treats me to them on a weekly basis. This is also when I sit down at screenings aimed at a senior audiences, and I always get a kick out of spotting their reactions, or judging the success of the film on a certain demographic by looking at how many people actually attend. More than that, I guess, I genuinely enjoy figuring out what it is that attracted them to the film in the first place, or what it is that turned me off.
THE WALK is the film about the tightrope walker who hung his wire between the Two Towers in the seventies and became a global sensation. I had seen the documentary MAN ON WIRE years ago, so I guess that was one of the reasons why I was curious about the film. But it became clear, however, that all its melodramatic aspects were kind of lost on me, because I was simply looking forward to what would be, in my opinion and having seen the trailer, one of the most spectacular cinematic sequences of the year in its finale, in which the man walks the wire. Indeed, spectacular it was.
Back to the screening. Not too long ago, I attended the saccharine and dull film The Intern at another senior screening, which played at the same time, on the same day, to a full house. This one was exactly attended by four more people aside from me, and I am quite sure that at least one of them was in their thirties. Now, why that is, I am not sure, I can only speculate in a tongue in cheek fashion that the usual older demographic avoided the film precisely because of the final sequences. Perhaps having seen the film's trailer before, they might have thought their final sequence would have been a little too much for their hearts to bear.
I for one, must admit, that that is probably why I went to see it in the first place, and also why I decided to sit on the second row for it. It's one of those films, I believe, that will lose its appeal once it makes the transition from cinema to home cinema, in terms of spectacularity, so I am happy I got to experience it. But everything else left me a little underwhelmed.