NEW YORK STORIES

"Sunday at The MOMA with Ingmar" by Shani R. Friedman

On a recent cold weekend, I crossed two firsts off my Life List: Watch a movie on one of the museum’s screens, and see what fans are raving about when they discuss the oeuvre of Bergman. I was accompanied by my friend Chazz, who, like me, is in his 30s and usually shuns mainstream Hollywood junk for “the cinema,” which means art houses with tiny screens and uncomfortable seats, and dialogue spoken in foreign accents.

We were seeing The Silence, a black and white Swedish film from the 1960s that was very scandalous in Sweden at the time for its sexual content (allusions to masturbation, incest and random carnal encounters) and flew in the face of the country’s censorship laws. We arrived early to an already long line that had formed in the cavernous basement above a subway station, which became ever more massive until the ushers opened the doors 20 minutes later. The audience was largely, if not exclusively white, but with a diverse age range from people in their twenties up to the auteur’s contemporaries.

We sat and watched people file in, and watched and watched because the show time came and went with the lights still on and the doors still open. Say what you will about regular theaters, but at least you can be certain that you’re watching trailers in the dark a good 10 minutes before the scheduled start of the movie. It was a large space, but not so much that we were going to have the luxury of empty seats on either side of us. Much to Chazz’s dismay, a guy sat down next to him right before the room went dark who smelled, according to Chazz, like he hadn’t showered that month. Always prepared, I offered him a perfume sample of Clinique’s Happy, a decidedly feminine scent, to hold under his nose.

Unfortunately for us, the afternoon went quickly downhill from there. As the movie unfolded, I soon began having trouble staying awake and noticed Chazz frequently examining his watch and giving me the nearly imperceptible but not unfamiliar what-have-we-done look. It was fast becoming clear that we had been burned once again by the film Gods and pretentious film critics who had led us astray to endure yet another painful movie-going experience at the hands of foreign directors and screenwriters.

About halfway through the film, there was an unintentional highlight. As Chazz and I were mentally trying to spur the other to walk out, a great noise went up nearby and froze everyone around us (froze beyond the average movie-watching freeze). Someone had very audibly broken wind. Amazingly, this had never happened to me before at the movies or at any other public space. It was a first I was sorry I hadn’t had on my list. The silence was quickly broken by titters and people shaking with unuttered laughter in their seats (their own version of The Silence perhaps). Some just looked on, stunned (stunned beyond bad movie stun). If nothing else, after doubling over laughing, I was fully awake and Chazz was able to wait out the end without having to frantically check his watch.

Judging by our baffled conversation afterward—I thought the two main characters were sisters and that one of them was dying, Chazz didn’t realize the characters were related until late in the film and thought the sister was just really neurotic—either Bergman’s movies are even more obtuse and ambiguous than his reputation implies, or Chazz and I are far less sophisticated that we’d like to believe. It’s probably the latter; so from now on, you’ll find me keeping my distance from the gassy knoll—as Chazz has nicknamed the MoMA incident—and hiding out in some colorless megaplex with a gigantic tub of popcorn watching explosions and overpaid American actors speaking the finest English-only dialogue.

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