Flight attendants, I suspect, love movies. They appreciate the
fact that on long trips their passengers are so busy staring at their seatback
screens that they forget to gripe and demand attention. Having just made two
very long trans-Atlantic flights, I’m grateful for having movies on demand to
help me pass the time.
Gone are the days when we had no choice but to watch the
sole movie (generally a middle-of-the-road family film) being screened in the
cabin. Since I could generally not see or hear all that well, I tended to opt
for the pleasures of a good book. Today, however, we often have dozens of
choices, and can stop and start a movie whenever the spirit moves us. Another
innovation: the movies available are chosen to suit a wide variety of tastes. Last
November, one inventive U.S. carrier offered a sampling of election-related
flicks, including Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington, Election, Napoleon Dynamite, and Citizen Kane. And who doesn’t love an
airline that gives you the opportunity to watch Audrey Hepburn at her most
enchanting in Roman Holiday?
On my long flights to and from Denmark, I found myself
making up personal rules for the kind of films best suited to inflight viewing.
Though I’d seen La La Land before, it
was a perfect choice: straightforward, upbeat, basically simple in its concept
and execution. (My fellow passengers seemed to agree.) I also enjoyed watching
Disney’s Moana, a family film I
probably wouldn’t pay to see in a multiplex, though I’m sure its sophisticated
animation worked much better on a big screen. Among the movies in the
“classics” category, I was glad to reaquaint myself with Big, the 1988 gimmick film made memorable by Tom Hanks’ charming
performance as a twelve-year-old boy in an adult’s body. Last year’s
Oscar-nominated Lion was simple
(perhaps too simple) in its concept, so that I never had to worry about losing
the thread of the story, but it struck me as tedious in its excution. (That
didn’t stop me, though, from tearing up at the climactic reunion scene I knew
was coming.) Perhaps my absolute
favorite was an oldie: Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment (1960). Here’s a piquant comedy that puts its accent
on characterization, not quips. It’s simple; it’s sincere; it’s a great film to
encounter in the middle of the Atlantic in the middle of the night.
Here’s what doesn’t work well on a
seatback screen: (1) Anything with an extremely complicated plot or a very
large cast of characters. (2) Anything highly dependent on verbal wit (those
little earphones don’t always do a great job of conveying all the dialogue).
(3) Anything in which wide-screen cinematography is a major part of the story,
especially if a good deal of the story occurs in semi-darkness. (4) Anything in
which characters speak in heavy dialect. I once tried watching Mr. Turner, the Mike Leigh biopic about
painter J.M.W. Turner, on an airplane. Since the cast is veddy British and the
film works hard to capture Turner’s shimmering artistic style via its visuals,
I soon gave up. But I’m sure I’d have an equally hard time with the South
Florida patois of Moonlight.
Here’s my strangest adventure in seeing a movie on a plane.
Years ago, late at night, the movie that came on was an old Astaire-Rogers
musical, The Story of Vernon and Irene
Castle. Light fare, right? Except that at the end of this true story of an
early twentieth-century dance team, Irene learns that her beloved Vernon has
just been killed in a plane crash. Ooops!
Update: Given the unfortunate stories coming out of United Airlines in the last day or so, maybe I should refer in my title to the UNFRIENDLY skies.
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