They signal to you to come for a film at the theater. You get in the car and jump onto a toll highway where you get a ticket when you get on, and pay when you get off. Along the way they play some musica that you understand, Loreena McKennitt, all the while he is speaking to you in a strange language. You get to what looks like a theater with adverts on the outside and head on in. Inside at the ticket booth you manage to ask for 2 tickets for Skyfall (the new james bond movie) which you know they don't have subtitles for and is in Italiano. Here is the Ticket:
The first thing you see is what look to you like row number and a seat number. You aren't sure as you don't know what fila and posto mean. Strange you think to yourself, why is that on there. Comparing the two tickets you see that both are in the same row, but have different seat numbers.
Upon entering the main booth area, a man takes your ticket and rips off the bottom, meanwhile the man your with is ushering you onward with a little haste. He can't tell you that if you don't arrive before the film, they lock the doors and you can't get in. You start walking down the hallways looking for #2 Zaffiso, which you guess is theater #2 with the name zaffiso? You find it and walk in. Inside you see a stadium seating arrangement for about 16 rows down to the floor. Unlike the theaters in the US where the seats go to about 12 feet from the screen, you see a vast space of nothing but floor for 50-60 feet from screen to the first row. Sure enough you find your row, and seat number and sit down. there are very few people in the room. you guess maybe 10% of the seats are full. Everyone sits in their assigned seat, even if that means kicking 10 people down 2 seats so they can sit in theirs.WTF crosses your mind, it's almost completely empty and these people "have" to sit in their seat? As the film starts everything sets in place and you begin to watch a crappy film in another tongue. About half way through, right in the middle of the film, it stops. A screen with "Intervallo" appears and the lights come on. Huh? Intermission lasts for about 4 min, and then strangely people sit back down and the film starts again. It finishes and you get up and leave the theater like normale.
Everything seems very similar all the time, and yet you feel like everything around you is always not quite the same as you know. You have to use all your brain to understand peoples intentions and physical movements to get a sense of understanding. You have to wait for the people around you to act first, so you can re-learn how to act and behave. You watch with intensity the interactions around you to get some baring on how you "should" act. And above all you have to have patients and be flexible. For you have joined for a moment in time an alternate reality where you and you alone have to relearn to be yourself in this new and similar world.
Once while jetlagged in England, I went for a 2am walk and found a noir film fest. All the films were either in English or had subtitles, but the culture blew me away with the dress, the beer, wine, food (in the theaters!) and the raucous nature of some of the patrons at some of the more ridiculous movies. Going to the movies in a different country definitely points out the cultural differences.
ReplyDeleteYes - it has been interesting to see the similarities to our culture, and the very strong differences. I think the tradition here of eating salad after the first dish keeps throwing me off, since in the US we always eat it first! Here, it is very strange to have salad as a first course, and you never mix dishes or have it all on one plate like we do.
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