A cinematic experience is subjective and shaped by a buncha things both in and out of your control. Like the atmosphere, where you sit, if the guy next to you soils himself etc.You buy your ticket during a festival, you choose your seat, you can ask the guy next to you if he has dysentery. And you’ve made the decision beforehand to read or not read spoilers and reviews. I attended two screenings at the 24th BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, including Soundless Wind Chime, (2009). It was my experience. Mine, mine, mine. As it’s a festival showing, you expect an introduction, ‘amazing film…director is supa dupa…wears hats… enjoy’, yadda, yadda, yadda. And as with the film I saw the night before someone equipped with a mic stood at the front of the cinema. In his introduction Guy with a Mic (so called because he was a guy and he was speaking into a mic, I didn’t notice the soap box til later) stated that some of the BFI literature giving a synopsis of the film handily declared that it included spoilers, so the reader knew that its content would give away key information that could spoil the film and can make the decision to read on or not. Right. Good. Stop there. Naaaahhh. Guy with a Mic then goes on to say that he didn’t think that was such a bright idea (the film not being spoiled I mean) and to share with us Clare McCracken his view that had he known certain things before watching the film he would have found it helpful. Ok… it’s not review time is it? Shouldn’t he be sharing this with people after the movie, if at all? Guy with a Mic goes on to share exactly what would have helped him understand the film better including key themes and plot devices. I assume he didn’t think too hard about what he was saying. Had he, perhaps he would have considered the idea that the director, Wing Kit Hung, kinda knew what he was doing and if he wanted the audience to be tooled up with this knowledge at the beginning of the film maybe he would have mentioned it himself ? He could have written a little blurb at the start, had a narrator (he probably wouldn’t have hired this guy) or conveyed the idea more subtly using the accomplished visual language he employed in the rest of the film. Alas, he did not. Hmmm. I would say that an explanation from Guy with a Mic (who was he? I dunno. A BFI employee presumably. Or perhaps they hired someone in especially to explain the film before it began) was an insult to the director who created this work and expected it to be presented as he had intended. It’s pretty patronising to the audience too. And rather presumptuous that because he didn’t understand the film, neither would the audience in front of him. That’s not to say I wholly understood the film and extracted every iota of meaning from it, but I would like to have understood and not understood it for myself. I purposely chose not to read spoilers, I consciously took that decision. According to Guy with a Mic it wasn’t the right one. I assumed this cinematic experience was mine, I bought the ticket. And I wanted to have my own experience not the one he wished he had had. It was self indulgent, if he wanted to express a personal opinion and share spoilers, Guy with a Mic should have got himself an IMDB account or a blog and indulged himself there. Soundless Wind Chime is a film to watch again to explore the themes, narratives, characters, language etc. I still intend to do so despite Guy with a Mic having massively tainted my first viewing. I found it infuriating. I wanted to walk out, not in a makinga-statement kind of way but because my experience of the film was ruined before it began. For the British Film Institute, of all places, to fail an audience’s most basic expectation is a shame and an embarrassment. Sat in your seat in the middle of the fifth row in a packed cinema is not the time to hear a spoiler synopsis. And it’s mighty difficult to escape. To compound my unhappy experience, I was sat behind a guy with a longer-than-average torso whose trendy haircut obscured my view of the subtitles. I actually had to read around his head. Left of head for the beginning, right of head for the end and I’d catch a bit in the middle if I was lucky and he sneezed or something. And I was sat directly in front of a guy who found vaguely amusing moments completely hilarious and just happened to have a really loud laugh. Or maybe he was sent from above to spite me. I’ll say my prayers tonight. Promise. As for the film itself, it was beautifully shot; the narrative structure suitably disorientating; the relationship conveyed by the male leads was convincing; coupled with beautifully composed and physically explorative camera work, it conveyed a true connection, intimacy and love. Although, I did find some of the more surreal, breaking-into-song moments a little jarring. Overall, Soundless Wind Chime is a beautiful and accomplished film. I will watch it again minus a Guy with a Mic pre-film review. Just get a blog.
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