I’ve written about a couple of the standalone cinemas in my hometown, Cinema Victoria and Cinema Timis, the latter actually close to being reopened with more than just a fresh lick of paint after some years of inactivity. It would be amiss if I ignored what I want to call “my local cinema”, even if it takes the form of Romania’s largest cinema chain. It’s local in the sense that it comes in handy after a day of work and happens to be within walking distance.
So buckle up and hopefully enjoy this long foray into my usual Monday afternoon. More precisely, yesterday’s.
Walk
I occasionally* leave work a bit early to catch a screening between 16.00 and 17.00 at the nearby mecca of local cinema experiences. It’s the kind of cinema that barely knows what it wants to be, stuck between the need to fill seats and the need to have enough movies listed to keep the projectors running. But more on that later.
The walk to the cinema takes about twenty minutes and I pass by what you would expect from a mostly industrial-commercial platform at the outskirts of the city: some factories, a garden store, a gas station, a car dealership, a car workshop, some misplaced houses, a small enclosure with a rowdy rottweiler crossbreed. I then go under the bridge and cross the railway tracks, reaching the point where buses turn around, a clear sign that what’s on the other side belongs to a different realm. The route then takes me by the side of the mall with a set of emergency exits, where employees usually gather two-three at a time for a smoke, before turning towards the two parking spots for electric cars that mark the beginning of civilization.
Mall
The Shopping City Mall is sometimes called “Mall-utz”, which translates to “little mall” and contrasts with the massive Iulius Town on the other side of the city. This one lacks glamour, has a more blue collar vibe, but still gets busy in the afternoons, with the downstairs corridors filling up with people perusing the chain stores dedicated mostly to clothing apparel, while the upstairs food court sees queues frequently form at the KFC touchscreens. The gym, a large arcade and betting establishment and the cinema round up the upstairs offerings.
Cinema Foyer
The cinema greets you with an cordoned-off maze for queue management, next to a generous open lounge. You’ve got seats on the sides, as well as a slightly friendlier and very colorful seating area next to the ice-cream/coffee point. Above the snacks counter and all the way towards the entrance, there’s a digital display to tease your blockbuster action taste buds. This can all get pretty lively, but it’s very rarely so when I’m there. The busier weekday is Tuesday, due to the all day discount offer CC have going, but other than that, it’s mighty chill.
Until recently, you would always get tickets at the dedicated ticket area, but due to low demand and for the sake of efficiency (must be a post-pandemic development), Monday through Thursday tickets are now sold in the same place as the cinema snacks. In spite of this, I’ve rarely seen obnoxious queues. Ticket prices for adults are 29 lei for regular 2D screenings (19 lei discounted), which converts to 6 EUR (4ish EUR discounted). Not exactly cheap, but reasonable.
Staff & Facilities
Still, this is a big cinema, with eleven screens, plus an IMAX and a 4DX, so there are always employees around. Which is where you start getting that sense of impersonality associated with chain cinemas. Even though I’ve been going there very regularly throughout this year, and at relaxed times, I’ve never had any hint that the mostly young-adults working there recognize me as some kind of regular. Of course, I just want some recognition, a subtle nod maybe, a tip of the old chapeau, not actual interaction.
While it feels a bit odd to see very familiar faces every time I go with no sense of shared recognition, staff has always been pleasant to deal with, including occasions when I’ve had to refund tickets. Just don’t ask to get flickering lights repaired, because “the manager already knows about it”.
Here are two more memorable interactions – one good and one part of the absurd nature of modern life. The good one I’ve already recounted on Instagram: while CC was running one of their scratch card promotional campaigns, I went to get my popcorn + fizz menu, saw an unusually low price pop up as I was about to pay, thought it was a mistake, but the person behind the counter said somebody had left their winning cards there and that it would be a shame to let them go to waste. This was particularly shocking to me because a couple of years earlier, still peak pandemic, I had bought a large popcorn to share and asked if it was possible to get an empty small popcorn container so that we limit cross-contamination – and the answer was a very blunt “that is just not possible”.
After crossing the lobby to get your ticket checked, you are free to access the many black boxes that provide emotional sustenance on big, bright screens. There are a few seats and tables along the hallways, but you’re unlikely to spend time there waiting. As a chain cinema, both CC locations in the city stand out as far as comfort and cleanliness go. Seats are generous, include cup-holders and wide arm rests and I’ve rarely seen someone else’s mess when finding my seat, even during busier hours. Hope that nobody’s seen my mess either. Even more impressively, the toilets are neat, odorless experiences, a real joy for those bladder-impaired cinema-goers like myself.
Insides
I might be a regular, but I’m not very intimately acquainted with all the 2D/3D screens. Eleven in total, they range from about thirty seats to three hundred (ballpark figures). Then you’ve got the imposing IMAX screen with 409 seats and the 4DX. I’ve only been to the latter twice and don’t see the value in the experience. All-together, that makes for 2531 seats.
One remark about the IMAX, which is a totally different beast – the largest screen in Romania when the cinema was opened in 2017 (336 sqm). While I enjoy watching the big-big-screen, the sound-levels at this particular CC get unpleasantly loud. I’ve complained online and gotten a consequence-less reply from whoever manages their social media account, but I’ve also recently witnessed someone vehemently complain to cinema staff in an uncomfortable encounter. It’s a problem.
Experience
Most of the time on my solitary mid-afternoon ventures, I’ll go to one of the “basic” screens, more often than not a smaller one, particularly when I watch off-mainstream releases. That’s one of the good things about CC, that with so many screens, there’s always room for one or two niche movies, even if their general selection feels a bit random when it comes to off-mainstream productions – you won’t see something like Tár or The Whale, but you’ll see Un Beau Matin or Les enfants des autres (me, screen 4, yesterday).
Ultimately, the number of seats is completely irrelevant, as I’ll frequently be alone in the cinema (yesterday included). It’s something I like, which is why I’ll generally choose CC over Cinema Victoria when there’s a choice to be made. After so many visits this year though, it got me feeling a bit lonely, as I’ve come to the realization that there are no other cooky cinephiles like me to share in the solitude of these weekday afternoons. Yes, yes, I can share elsewhere, but I want to share on my lonely island, is that too much to ask?
I’m no expert on judging image and sound quality, but for what it’s worth, the screens look nice and clean, the digital projection has never hiccupped, the sound is fine and I’ve just generally never encountered any memorable technical troubles. Well, except the flickering light the manager knew about.
Oh, and one detail I don’t like very much is that once the credits start rolling, the lights go up too fast. I’d very much like to indulge in the post-cinematic moment for a bit longer, loosely dressed and smoking a cigarette, thank you very much.
Return
Leaving is a particular experience when visiting this CC, because after the movie ends, someone will be waiting at the bottom of the stairs to direct you towards the “correct” exit. You don’t leave the way you came in, but rather through a mysterious corridor of endless white, with the occasional “Spre Mall” (towards the mall) sign on the wall.
Sometimes, you have to walk just a few meters and you’re out. Other times, you make your way through the corridors for what seems an eternity. You get a sense of being in the intestines of the mall, with the supply entrances to the upper floor restaurants strewn all over the place. For a couple of months earlier in the year, when the corridor was being repainted, you could at best find a very faded text to guide you through this back corridor, as you walked around pallets of goods, stacked chairs, throwaways from the children’s playground, construction materials and the occasional misplaced human being. It was all very Lynchian and I was tempted many times to just dash out an emergency exit, but have never done so. Something for the bucket list.
As you do find your way towards the mall, the silence of the white corridors is infiltrated by distant mechanical sounds, faint shuffling noises and the trill of deconstructed voices. I usually take a minute when I reach the PVC doors and try to take in the otherworldliness for just a little bit longer, before letting it go for whatever lies beyond.
tributary stu 