While in Vienna I saw two extremely different movies in two very different settings. The first movie that I saw was Dark Night Rises in an English movie theater. The second movie I saw was The Magic Flute at the outdoor film festival.
Going to a movie in a non-American movie theater was a very interesting and new experience for me. When someone suggested that we go see the Dark Night Rises I thought it was a great idea since I had not seen the movie yet and a nice relaxing night also sounded very appealing after the first hectic week. What I did not take into account was just how different an experience an Austrian movie theater would provide as opposed to an American theater. The first difference that I realized was the movie tickets for students were only about six euros. This was about a four euro discount from the regular ticket price. Compared to the $11.50 student price I have to pay in America, which is only about a dollar discount, this was amazing to me. While this was my first experience with the pretty sizable student discount in Austria, it was thankfully not my last. The next change that I saw was that we had assigned seats. This was extremely new to me, at least in a movie theater setting, and it also seemed very impractical since we were not given a choice of seats and there were only about five other people in the whole theater. The seats themselves were also quite unusual to my American movie going self. They were not stadium seating, which would have made it very difficult to see the screen if there had actually been anyone sitting in front of us, and they were also surprisingly nice and squishy. This last discovery was actually quite nice since often times in America this is not the case.
While we were watching the movie two other things become obvious very quickly. The first, was that there was absolutely no airconditioning. Given the fact that I had been in Austria for a week already and experienced the fact that they definitely did not believe in central airconditioning, I am not sure why this surprised me. I guess I can blame it on the overly airconditioned movie theaters back home. However, the lack of air in the theater made the whole experience a little difficult since it had to be about eighty degrees in the movie theater. My second discovery while watching the film was that no one else in the theater laughed at all during the movie. The Dark Night Rises is obviously not the funniest movie, but it did have some one liners that made our group laugh but when I looked around, all the Austrians were just staring up at the screen without a smile on their faces. This lack of response from the audience is a very interesting difference from American audiences who laugh, cry, and often yell at the screen.
My second movie experience in Austria could not have been more different from my first. I went with a group of other students to see The Magic Flute at the open air film festival outside the Rathaus. There were dozens of different booths with a wide variety of foods, beer, and wine, all of which were absolutely fantastic. After getting something to eat we were able to sit down with a glass of wine and watch The Magic Flute. The atmosphere was great, the weather was beautiful, but I had absolutely no idea what was happening in the movie. The fact that it was in German and had no subtitles I am sure had at least something to do with my lack of understanding but given that it was an opera I am sure that there were parts that even native German speakers probably could not understand. The setting and staging of the movie did not help at all either. It would go from three women singing on fake Alps to a man dressed in yellow who drove a yellow car filled with bird cages. In short, the movie totally baffled me. Despite my lack of understanding however, this was one of my best nights in Vienna because it was such a wonderfully Viennese experience to have.
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