Tom Cruise, star of Mission: Impossible and noted advocate of public enthusiasm, popped into the London Imax last week to catch a screening of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. He posted a short clip of the experience to Twitter, under the precis: “Big Movie. Big Screen. Loved it.”
We must imagine this as a set of instructions: go forth and buy tickets, so we can keep making our bonkers explosion-offs for you in the future. When asked if he had enjoyed the film, he said: “I loved it” – twice. He wore a mask.
As the first major release since the pandemic pressed pause on mainstream cinema, Tenet is a big deal and a test. Agog, I read a report in Variety about Nolan superfans who were flying, on actual aeroplanes, to locations where cinemas were open, just so they could see it on a big screen. Some flew across the United States; some were planning to fly into London from Europe, though, like many of us, they could only try their best to keep up with the government’s air corridor whack-a-mole. I was torn between being horrified at the thought of taking a flight to see a film and amazed by the devotion. It makes camping out for a first midnight showing look half-hearted.
I have missed going to see a film more than I ever expected, so, like Cruise, I psyched myself up for a trip to the cinema. Mind you, I picked an Australian indie film about a teenager with cancer and went on a Tuesday evening, so there were only eight other brave souls in there, all well apart, all quietly sobbing by the end. It turns out that masks double up quite nicely as impromptu tear-catchers. I had hoped that the whole mask situation might have the bonus effect of halting the trend for entire meals being consumed during films – I prefer the Isabelle Huppert approach of “no snack, no drink, no food” – though, sadly, masks may be removed to eat and there is still an appetite for burgers at the big screen.
The notion of having to rev oneself up for an experience that had previously been so ordinary was strange and though the film, Babyteeth, was excellent, going to the cinema isn’t quite the escapist dream yet. I’m not sure I’m ready to squash into a crowded room for a blockbuster. Wheeling out Cruise for encouragement is the Hollywood equivalent of the Queen delivering an unscheduled speech and not on Christmas Day. They’re bringing out the big guns. This time, it’s serious.
Hozier: an Instagram lesson for us all
The singer Hozier posted an Instagram story to his 1.6 million followers that showed him saying “yeah girl”, laughing and touching his mouth sexily, I think, while using the Handsome Squidward filter.
I realise that if future aliens find this scrap of paper and read that sentence, they might wonder, as I did, if any of it makes sense, but this is 2020, so buckle up. Handsome Squidward is Squidward from Spongebob Squarepants, after he’s been made accidentally handsome and the filter chiselled Hozier into an uncanny impersonation of Russell Brand.
The problem is that Hozier, 30, did not mean to post it to 1.6 million people, only to his “close friends”, but the buttons are very close together. “I’m so mortified,” he said, in a follow-up video, after the “yeah girl” clip did the rounds. “I’m not high, I just pressed the wrong button and my phone shat the bed.”
It could have been worse. Some people, not naming names, have been blessed with the front-facing camera opening quite by surprise while simply trying to read the news on the loo and that would be truly an accidental post to behold. There but for the grace of clumsy thumbs go I. Or, er, whoever it is that it happened to.
Kate Winslet: not afraid to tell the naked truth
The trailer for Francis Lee’s Ammonite, released last week, built excitement for the film, a long-awaited romantic period drama starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. It also stood as a test to anyone who thought they could spell ammonite straight out of the traps without the assistance of spellcheck.
Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, Winslet, 44, discussed the lack of vanity she felt when playing Victorian fossil-hunter Mary Anning, particularly when it came to nude scenes. “I was just excited to say, ‘This is what it is, peeps. This is how I am now and it’s very much not the body I had 20 years ago,’” she said, gamely.
I’m never quite convinced when actors talk about a lack of self-consciousness, but there is a sense that we are living in a time of great change when it comes to sex and nudity on screen.
Titillation for the sake of it is firmly out. Take it as it is is in. Just last week, Daisy Edgar-Jones talked about the importance of the “equality in nudity” of Normal People. “If you’re trying to tell the truth of a relationship you have to include the truth of what that means in terms of intimacy,” she told a virtual panel at the Edinburgh television festival. I wonder if this means the L-shaped sheet, which leaves men topless on-screen but covers up women, has gone for good.
At the moment, there is talk of kissing through Perspex on TV sets, but post-Perspex, hopefully, the shift towards respectful realism is here to stay.
•Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist
