Kirsten Dunst in Marie Antoinette. Photograph: Leigh Johnson
No one introduced your art house film? No Q&A session at the end? The cinema hasn't taken on the feel of a well-upholstered lecture hall? Better ask for your carrot cake money back. All art house screenings are accompanied by a talk these days.
This Sunday, a showing of Marie Antoinette at the Curzon in Mayfair, London, will be followed by (yay!) an hour-long discussion between Lady Antonia Fraser, author of the biography that inspired the film, and Sarah Greenberg, editor of the Royal Academy Magazine. Their highbrow chinwag will offer "an authoritative view of Europe as it was then" and promote the RA's highly acclaimed Citizens and Kings exhibition.
On the same afternoon, the Todd Haynes classic Far From Heaven is preceded by a brief talk from professor of film studies at the University of Warwick, Richard Dyer, at the Curzon in Chelsea, London. On March 14, Maggie Gyllenhaal's cinematic portrayal of loveable smackhead, Sherrybaby, is introduced at the ICA cinema by the film's director, Laurie Collyer. On April 13, cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky will introduce new prints of his cult flicks The Holy Mountain and Fando y Lis.
OK, the Jodorowsky talk is almost certainly worth the ticket price. This Chilean auteur has claimed in the past to have made his films "with [his] testicles" and suggested that superheroes Plastic Man and Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four could produce some wonderful pornography together. However, the other cine discussions might prove a little dry, not least because a well-appointed address seems to be the artsy marketing ploy du-jour.
Once, no silent film print could go unscreened without it being accompanied by a new "interpretative" soundtrack, by anyone from Bonnie Tyler to DJ Spooky. Now, all but the most obvious of pictures need to be contextualised, pulled apart and discussed to bits, to draw in a few wavering viewers.
Sure, some talks offer new perspectives. Hearing Anthony Minghella introduce Fellini's I Vitelloni, I learnt a little more about the British director's Italian ancestry, as well as his wayward youth on the Isle of Wight. Listening to Sophia Coppola's talk before a screening of The Virgin Suicides, I now know that James Woods reads every single script he is sent. Catching Ben Affleck's waffle prior to a showing of Good Will Hunting I can say, with first hand experience, that Affleck is a fool. No doubt other cinematic pearls will be cast before viewers in the weeks to come.
Yet, I can't help but recall the words of Robert Altman, in a Guardian interview a few years ago, when he argued that the moment you start to examine film-making - discuss it, categorise it - it becomes an untruth and you become a grotesque.
Shouldn't an evening at the pictures be just that? One great film, then home? Surely we can leave the rest to, well, the internet, the next day's papers, or at least the bus ride home?
