“Did you hear the news?
They’re tearing our building down.
Making way for the future,
They don’t want no relics around.”
– Dashboard Confessional
Every hometown has at least one place that’s considered an immovable center that ties the people themselves together, giving identity, meaning, and hope to the town itself. Sometimes it’s a diner or coffee shop, sometimes a park. For those who remember, it could be a shopping mall where everybody hung out to socialize, meet others, and people-watch. In my case, it was several of these – Diners where my friends and I would drink coffee all night, the mill pond, the local mall, the huge indoor flea market, the local arcade, a pizza spot, even a drive-in movie theater.
In writer/director David Gleeson’s Once Upon a Time in a Cinema, this town center is given away in the title. It’s the mid-1980s. The Ormond Cinema in East Limerick, Ireland, has been around for forty years, and is the place where townsfolk gather for fun and a sense of community, regardless of what’s playing on the screen that night. They frequently buy their tickets before even asking what’s being shown. It’s just one screen and one showing per night, so they don’t even have to wonder what time it starts.
The entire film takes place in one night at the cinema, but it packs a lot of action and information into that single night. One of the coolest things about this film – It plays out in real time while the movie in the cinema plays out – Breathless (1983).
“A very tired theater owner weighs selling the cinema while having the worst night of his career.”
Earl Clancy (Colin Morgan) is our main character who owns the cinema along with his younger brother Gerald Clancy (Calam Lynch). They took over running the cinema from their father Dan Clancy (Dean Panter), who we only ever see in a photo on the wall. Gerald seeks to convince Earl to sell the cinema to an investor named Harry Conway (Stanley Townsend). With the money from the sale, they plan to open a petrol/gas station. Earl is teetering back and forth on whether to sell. This cinema has been in his family for decades, and has tons of history to it. It’s a local treasure. But he sure could solve a lot of his problems by selling.
Aside from our main plot, we also see Mr. Clancy (Earl) dealing with every other thing in the world simultaneously – Trying to track down a robber, stopping poster thieves, dealing with a guy who keeps demanding money from him, trying to handle his troublemaking teenage daughter Kate Clancy (Clara Crichton), etc. On top of that, his projectionist was fired after showing up drunk and screwing up the movie, so he had to take over as projectionist and swap out the reels every 15 minutes throughout the night while still dealing with everything else.
Throughout, many of the employees and patrons attempt to remind Mr. Clancy of why the town needs this cinema, and what would happen to the people without it. In that sense, it’s sort of reminiscent of It’s a Wonderful Life.
Daughter: “When I was small, you told me that it was magic behind the screen. You told me that all the Disney princesses lived back here, so I decided to see for myself… All I found back here was junk.”
Earl: “Welcome to Hollywood.”
Once Upon a Time in a Cinema is a well-crafted, beautifully shot ode to film, cinema, and the idea that sometimes, the value of a building is much more than the sum of its parts.
Earl: “Buildings hold on to memories. This one especially. Before it was a cinema, it was a theater. Every character in every play, every film we’ve ever shown lives on in these walls.”
"…Every character in every play, every film we’ve ever shown lives on in these walls."
