Hooray for Hollywood

In these days of the mega-plex, 3D film houses, and soaring prices for the latest releases, a trip to the movies in River Falls constitutes a journey back in time. In recent years, Kathleen and I have rarely gone out to a movie because of the hassle of driving through traffic and the expensive cost. As you might guess, neither of those factors are an issue in River Falls. Last night, when we decided to go to see the Oscar-nominated film 1917, we were delighted to find that it was currently showing in our local movie house, the River Falls Theater. That theater is located right on Main Street, two miles from our house, directly across from the Nutty Squirrel.

The day before this, however, we watched a film at home that we found on On Demand with our Comcast package. The 2009 movie is called New in Town, and you will never find it on any lists of Oscar-Nominated films. It is formulaic and predictable, but I am a sucker for romantic comedies, so I enjoyed it. The plot is simple: a sophisticated Miami woman, played by Renee Zellweger, is sent to a small Minnesota town in order update a factory and downsize the workforce.  It is a familiar, fish-out-of-water story, and, of course, there is a romantic interest in the form of the local union rep, played by Harry Connick, Jr. Much of the humor stems from the Miami girl trying to adjust to the foreign, upper-Midwest culture as well as the brutal weather. When she first arrives in the Minneapolis airport in the dead of winter, she is toting six matching suitcases on a cart while wearing five-inch heels, a short skirt, and a stylish, light jacket. Heading outdoors to retrieve her rent-a-car, she shrugs and mutters, “How bad can it be?” before stepping through the automatic doors. As they close behind her, she is stunned by the cold air and screams a muffled “Mother . . .!” There are a few other funny moments that resonated with us as we traverse a similar period of transition to small-town life.

We only saw one movie at the theater in 2019. That is about our usual average—one film per year. While our home in Nashville was being photographed by the realtors, and we had to be out of the house, we attended a matinee of Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino’s take on Hollywood in 1969 and the Manson murders was great fun in an absurd sort of way. I read a negative review of the film that accused Tarantino of racism toward Asians. The review said that “Bruce Lee wasn’t really like that.” I replied aloud to the inanimate internet review, “Perhaps not. But then again, the Manson followers were not destroyed with a flame-thrower either.”

With Academy Awards season upon us, we wanted to see two films in the same year that were nominated for best-picture Oscars (something I haven’t done for decades).  We decided to venture into the cold to see Sam Mendes’s World War I film, 1917. The River Falls Theater is a throwback to earlier times. With a traditional marquee that hangs out over the street, the theater has been an iconic landmark on Main Street since it was first built in 1927. When it fell on hard times in the 1970s, it was purchased by the McCulloch family, and they have kept it going since then. As near as I can tell, the business has stayed alive by showing first-run films at bargain prices, and the town seems to have supported their efforts. A state grant in recent years enabled the family to update some things and expand to a second screen in an empty building next door. And when I say “bargain prices,” I’m not just blowing smoke. The cost is three dollars for senior citizens and kids, five dollars for everyone else. All the time. Moreover, on Tuesdays, it is three dollars for everyone. As Kathleen likes to say, “It’s a heckova deal.” Also, while many restored old theaters show classics, art films, or movies that have been out for a while, River Falls Theater manages to show current releases. Today, they are showing Doolittle along with 1917. (Perhaps they chose those two films because both names can fit on the tiny marquee.) Before the film started, in lieu of the usual 20 minutes of commercials for the latest corporate products or entertainment in your local multi-plex theater, our five-minute intro consisted entirely of short ads for mom-and-pop businesses from River Falls. Many of these businesses were by now familiar to us, and I believe we saw our daughter-in-law Amber in one of them. One of the ads, from the local waste disposal department, was a humorous, tongue-in-cheek, public service announcement about what NOT to flush down your toilet (“Wipes clog pipes” was the catch phrase). While our seats did not recline, and the sound system did not cause our internal organs to vibrate, the theater had everything we wanted for a movie-viewing experience.

The film itself lived up to its accolades. The story follows two British soldiers as they try to maneuver through the trenches and French countryside in order to deliver an urgent message to the front. There has been much discussion about the technical skill of the director, Mendes, in creating the impression that the entire film was one continuous camera shot without editing (as Hitchcock did in 1948 with Rope). The emotional impact was more important for me, though, as the viewer is drawn into the story and shares the fear, the constant tension, and the sense that the entire world has become some indecipherable maze in which there is no place to hide. We never learn much about the main characters, and I think that was on purpose. This tactic allows the messengers to appear as tiny pawns in a huge, bloody game being played out by the superpowers of the age. Ultimately, the film is a powerful statement about the futility and senselessness of war.

1917 is well worth seeing, so if you are in River Falls, look for the 1920s marquee on Main Street and stop in. The theater is a gem, and, after all, today it’s only three bucks.