MOVIE INTERMISSION MOVIE
No one’s going to pretend that bringing back intermissions would suddenly reverse the post-pandemic malaise of movie theatres in the face of Netflix, Disney+ and others. This would be fitting as this multi-Oscar-winner was a holdover – in a world leaning into the streamlined blockbuster machines ushered in by Spielberg, Lucas et al – from the old-style, sprawling epics that parted their productions midway as surely as Charlton Heston did the Red Sea.īut 21st-century cinema now faces its own existential threat: streaming. Gandhi, in 1982, is often cited as the last major western film to feature an intermission. But essentially, at some point, some Hollywood analyst decided that a 10-minute hiatus was incompatible with the “pack ’em in, six shows a day” production line of the modern multiplex. They have made the occasional return in showcase screenings of latter-day Hollywood film, to enhance the old-timey mood – as with Peter Jackson’s King Kong (187 minutes) or Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (187 minutes) – or simply out of mercy in the case of the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League (242 minutes). However, the death of the intermission has actually been much exaggerated: it still survives in Iceland, Switzerland, Egypt, Turkey and, of course, India, where movies contain so many volcanic emotions that a break to let everyone cool off is practically a public health measure. Old-style, sprawling epics parted their productions midway as surely as Charlton Heston did the Red Sea So why not make it official and, once a film tops the 150-minute mark, give us all a break? Elongated runtimes have become so common that many franchises, such as Avengers, The Hobbit and It, started breaking up unified stories into multiple parts anyway – effectively enforcing months-long intermissions. But, with more franchises than ever happy to take their sweet time, the intermission would be a welcome opportunity to hit the WC, as well as loosen the legs and buttocks and avail ourselves of refreshments, while musing with fellow cinemagoers on the semantics of grunge in The Batman. It feels like a relic of a more civilised epoch. Given that it joins No Time to Die (163 minutes) and Avengers Endgame (181 minutes) in the ranks of recent blockbusters dicing with the bladder-busting three-hour limit, is it time we reinstated that staple of another era of maximalist cinema: the intermission? No such easy escape, though, for audiences of The Batman, who must display superhuman willpower and gird their loins for its 176-minute runtime. According to Robert Pattinson, the most important accessory on the new batsuit was not the batarang, the bat lasso or the bat grapple, but a Velcro flap that allowed him to pee when needed.
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