From the outside,
Toby Theatre
didn't look like it was open for business. The big wooden doors looked
firmly shut, there were no windows to peer in from and all was quiet
outside. But when K tugged at the door handle, it reluctantly relented,
revealing its plush, red-carpeted warmness inside.
Before
we could thaw out from the cold outside, we had to pay the lady sitting
in the little booth right by the door inside the theatre. Calling it a
booth might be a little generous. It looked more like a closet, or a
confessional booth, except instead of a curtain and some netting to
obscure the confessor, there was a thick clear plastic pane with a
little cut-out circle so that we can communicate.
There
was no need to tell the lady which movie we were watching. Neither did
we have to tell her which screening we wanted. The cinema only has one
screening about once every two days and if
you haven't figured it out by now, the cinema literally only has one
screen.
We were catching Mission Impossible
4 (one would think that they would be screening Mission Impossible 5 by
now, being this close to the tinsel source), but it
wasn't only that they were screening something that is already on its
last legs of the season in Australia a few thousand kilometres away, the
movie actually made its premiere in downtown Invermere a mere week ago.
And we caught the final screening a week later.
Stepping into the building, everything felt very . . .
compact. It was as if we had entered one of those old British theatres
(for performances, not movies) in minature. There was dark wood
panelling and a maroon carpet. There was a sense of plushness and also .
. . tradition. We didn't even get a ticket stub in exchange for our
money. S was a bit confused as to where we'd be sitting. The lady called
out "just go through and sit wherever".
We had to
pass the strategically located candy bar before entering the screening
room. K and D succumbed and bought some popcorn with "real melted
butter" (it was one of the selling points on their website). In true
German style, S wondered if there were any beer available. I helpfully
told him there was root beer.
"That's not beer," S replied.
"But there's the word 'beer' in it," I reasoned.
"Yes, but there's also the word 'root'."
Goodies
in hand, we turned to the screening room where we could already see the
entire width of the screen through the double open doors. Guess the
minature theme extended there. There were model WWII planes hanging from
the ceiling, giving me the distinct impression that I was going to be
catching one of those propaganda movies during the war.
We walk down the carpeted path, past less-than-plush
chairs. These weren't modern-day, Gold Class cinema soft cushiony
seating. These are what church pews would look like if they had
individual seating and fold-up seats, complete with hard wooden back
rests and the bare minimum of cushion for your bottom that leaves you
undecided if the seats are soft or hard. The seats in the back half of
the theatre even had some strange red carpeting on the back rests.
Amusingly,
some of the seats were actually cuddle-friendly, in the sense that they
had no arm rest in between two seats, not in the sense that they were
any more soft or lounge-friendly.
We chose our seats, D
and I on one of those "love seats", K and S in individual seats next to
D. The place was really warm and we were in a hurry to shed our layers,
beanies and gloves. Unfortunately, some of us were also heavy laden
with pop corn and drink, and there were no cup holders. S stood in as a
human-sized cup holder for K, while I placed our drink on the hard
cement floor (the carpets were reserved only for the aisle).
Before
long, the lights dimmed and the trailers came on. We got as comfortable
as one can on seats that promoted good posture. Then about a minute
into the first trailer (some sort of sequel to the Borat movie), the
film reel melted.
You know those special effects you
see of the film melting and suddenly all you see is a white screen? For a
split second, we all thought that was what we were witnessing. That was
until the lights in the theatre came on and the screen stayed white for
an unnatural amount of time.
D exploded into laughter.
Elevator music came on. The four of us looked at each other in
amusement. I looked around at the other five people in the cinema. They
looked like this was what they experienced every time they watched a
movie. I didn't realise there are cinemas out there that still use
actual film!
About five minutes later, the lights dimmed again and we continued where we left off. After the second trailer and
no ads, the movie started.
For
a small screen and lack of Dolby surround sound, we actually got quite
engrossed in to the movie. That was until the part where Tom Cruise had
to step out of a window some 100 stories up so that he can scale the
building from the outside.
I waited with bated breath
as he inched closer towards the open window . . . and then suddenly, a
white screen with the words "Intermission" appeared. I actually thought
it was part of the movie. Who puts an intermission in the middle of a
Hollywood movie? This isn't a circus act. You watch a Hollywood movie,
you commit to it and ignore the bladder that threatened to explode the
minute the movie started.
But once again, the lights
and elevator music came on. People actually walked out of the cinema as
if this was normal. This time, I burst out laughing and looked at D, K
and S, asking incredulously, "Really?!"
With nothing else
to do, we milled out into the foyer that now felt like half the size of
an entire hotel suite (the budget one, not the presidential one).
Since
this was no longer a bladder endurance exercise, I thought I'd pay a
visit to the washroom, appropriately labelled "Guys" and "Dolls". That
was when the next surprise of the evening awaited me. It was as if I had
stepped into an old Western saloon.
There were two
stalls in the washroom, one fully enclosed, the other, which I had to go
to, had one of those Western saloon swinging door that basically only
covered me from my knees up to my chest. Luckily, I could lock the
door.
Unluckily, there was another girl in the washroom
who I somehow felt I had to have a conversation with, seeing that we
could see each other clearly despite me being in a cubicle! We exchanged
an awkward look, I muttered, "This is interesting." She laughs and
politely replied, "I'll just leave now."
Escaping the less than private washroom and about three minutes
later, we settled back into our seats and resumed our movie-watching,
picking up from where we left off.
Toby Theatre was a very interesting experience, something that I
have never had before. It was a step back into time and what made it
even more amazing is the fact that this was no tourist attraction - the
locals actual experience this in their daily lives (well, maybe weekly
lives, if they choose to catch every new movie that comes into town).
