Capote is not exactly the preposterous but coherent blockbuster full of wisecracks that I was looking for after the arthouse film festival but it was still a welcome change. Long pauses there were, but motivated. And yes, Capote does tell stories about his childhood but it’s because he’s speaking to someone else about childhood. The speakers in the film respond logically to one another.

The film, despite golden globes and glowing and well-deserved reviews attracted about 15 people. The film immediately before, Pride and Prejudice, was attended by two people (unless the outrageous English rosery had prompted a mass walkout earlier on). Various theories are advanced by people in the business to explain this bewildering decline in cinema-going. Bad sound. Uncomfortable seats. Not enough popcorn. I have my own theory though. It’s ill-informed and based on dubious statistics but at least I can invoke Occam’s razor: it’s the obvious explanation.

About a dozen years ago a cinema ticket was three or four times as expensive as a loaf of bread. It is now 15 times as expensive. People are still eating bread but a lot of them are using the internet and watching splendid, sweeping cinematic shots of the Kansas plains on 16″ VDUs.

Another of the bonuses of the arty film festival was that, presumably because you cannot readily download films like the Icelandic/Danish Dark Horse, the cinema was packed with people. Going to the cinema for the first time in a long time felt like going to the cinema. And there was no popcorn.