Non-Fiction
An Oscar Night
Oscar Night is always big in my life. As soon as the nominations are announced, usually in January, Rumi, my wife and I scramble to movie theatres to see as many movies as possible before Oscar Night, usually mid-March. Since the days in Dhaka University when Jack Nicholson won the Best Actor award for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, we have been Oscar-addicts. We not only try to see all the pictures nominated both before and after Oscar Night, but also follow the careers of the actors and actresses who catch our fancy. And this dedication we now also see in our children! This year the film The King's Speech received twelve Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor, and as soon as the nominations were announced Rumi and I felt ecstatic. We saw the movie in early December and were completely moved by it. I strongly felt that the film should garner nominations for all the major categories. So when our judgment was validated, it gave us great satisfaction. Others that are also nominated include True Grit, Inception, Black Swan and Rabbit Hole. We decided early on after reading the reviews that we needed to see the last two before the Oscars were awarded on February 27th. One reason was that not only were these two nominated in multiple categories, but most importantly in the Best Actress category: Natalie Portman for Black Swan and Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole. For us living in the Boston area, going to a movie theatre is one of the many competing pastimes that vie for our time. Because of our busy schedule, we can only go to movie theatre during weekends. Unfortunately, the weekend is often crammed with other necessary and recreational events to attend to, such as going to the bank, grocery shopping, jogging, cultural events, and of course dinner parties. And if all these are not enough, Rumi and I spend a considerable amount of time to stay in touch with our children (who live independently), extended family, and parents and aunts living in Bangladesh. I mention all this because we find that Saturday nights are the only time we can slip out and head for the movie theatre. Two Saturdays ago, on a cold wintry night, we headed for the movie theatres to see our two movies. It was already past 9 o'clock when we reached the Randolph Showtime Cinema. This megaplex has 16 theatres under one roof, and we were sure we'd be able to find one of the two movies playing. We were foolish not to check the Internet for listing and show times. When we entered the theatre we discovered that the next showing of Black Swan was an hour away. Since we did not want to wait for an hour to see Black Swan, we considered our next options, i.e., either see something else or go to another cineplex. Since all the others either did not appeal to us or we had already seen them, we decided to try the Braintree AMC Theaters located ten miles away. Again, these days a tech-savvy person would check the listing on the cell phone, but Rumi's Blackberry had low battery and we decided to just drive on. We were sure we'd be able to catch Rabbit Hole at Braintree, because Braintree was more cosmopolitan than Randolph and would have a more diverse fare than the latter. I need to mention that Rabbit Hole is an Australian film. To cut the story short, Braintree was not showing Rabbit Hole either, and as at Randolph, Black Swan was at 10:30. Reluctantly we decided to call it a night and head for home. But we decided to try again the following Saturday, and this time we checked the Events Calendar on the Internet. Luckily for us, we found that Rabbit Hole was at Hoyt's Cinema in Sharon. The theatre was located close to our house, and we headed out for the 9:05 show. But as happens often, we were a little behind, and dinner and other chores took a little longer than we had planned and it was 8:45 before we finally pulled out of the driveway. I had a premonition that we would be at least ten minutes late, even if we took the expressway, and ran into no traffic. Nonetheless, we decided that it was worth a try, and if we were lucky the trailers that precede the feature film would take ten to fifteen minutes and we would not miss much. When we reached the theatre it was already 9:10 and I tried to cheer up Rumi by telling her that we would miss only 5 minutes of trailers and not the movie. We checked the ticket counter and asked them if the movie had already started. This being a small suburban movie theatre was not very busy, and the girl who was attending the concession stand was also doubling as the ticket counter agent. She called the "projector man" on the walkie-talkie and after checking with him reassured us that the movie had not started yet. Another gentleman who was standing next to her behind the counter also seconded that and informed us that it takes at least ten minutes to finish the trailers. We felt relieved and after buying the tickets headed for Theatre No. 3. We reached the gate, but when we looked into the theatre we saw not a single soul inside, and the screen was dark. We thought that we had come to the wrong theatre and after checking the signage we determined that we were at the right place. But it was already past 9:15 and theatre #3 was empty and there was pin drop silence. We were wondering if the showing was cancelled and came out to check with the manager. We saw the girl who sold us the tickets and, she guessed our puzzlement, said reassuringly, "Don't worry, the movie will start in a minute. Since we had not sold a single ticket for the movie before you guys came, the projectionist had not started the movie." She said it in such a calm tone that we didn't know how to react to the news that we were going to be the only two humans in the theatre to watch Rabbit Hole. If it had been a horror movie, I am not sure if we'd have turned back and gone home rather than watch gore and blood scene after scene by ourselves, but we knew Rabbit Hole was not in that genre. It was a movie about a couple trying to cope with the loss of their four year old child. So, we knew that while there might be a few scenes where the couple shout at each other, there were no murders involved. So, for the first time in our lives, we were at a movie theatre with rows and rows of empty seats, and just each other to keep company when the first trailer and advertisement started. We looked at each other, and decided that it wasn't such a bad thing after all. Valentine's Day was only a day away, and here we were, a middle-aged couple, sitting in the centre of an otherwise completely empty theatre watching a "night show" with only each other for company. I wonder how many people ever are privileged to have such a showing. An Oscar Night indeed for us! Needless to say, the movie was an added treat and an exquisite one at that!!
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