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Best Video's Rai Bruton, with Lyric Hall's John Cavaliere: “Places like this and Best Video will only last if we work together.”
Lyric Hall Theater came full circle on Tuesday night as the beloved Westville venue partnered with Best Video for the first night of its new monthly film series for New Haven movie fans.
An enthusiastic sold-out crowd was treated to a showing of the 2023 Wim Wenders film Perfect Days, and there could not have been a more perfect film to show, nor a more perfect pairing of art institutions, to pull it off.
All of this took place more than a year after the closure of the Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas downtown, thereby making the city’s closest commercial non-Yale, non-porno movie theater in North Haven.
It was a sold out show...
“It feels like we picked up where we left off,” said Lyric Hall owner John Cavaliere, who hugged and greeted grateful attendees offering their exclamations of joy and gratitude at the 827 Whalley Ave. theater being reopened for this event. “I think the building wants to be full of people again.”
Cavaliere noted that Lyric Hall had gone through a “grace period” being closed to events for the past four years, and they are ready to “build community” once more.
Being in collaboration with Best Video — which Cavaliere said he has been frequenting since he was a teenager in the 1980s — also means they can offer popcorn and beverages for purchase, as Best has cafe and food licenses, though he also noted that people can feel free to BYOB.
“If you were to tell me at age 15 that I’d have a theater and be collaborating with them, I’d’ve never believed you. It’s almost like these seeds took a long time to grow, but we have the roots and connections.”
Cavaliere also said he is working on bringing live music back to the space, maybe in the form of an acoustic music series sometime next year. (Singer-songwriter Frank Viele has announced a tentative set of dates for a concert series he is organizing there.) But for tonight he was concentrating on this collaboration and the ever-growing crowd eager to experience the film.
“The biggest antique I ever restored is filled with love and people supporting artists,” he said with a smile. “What can be better than that?”
Cavaliere went to the front of the stage and welcomed everyone before the film began, saying how it was “hard to believe” that it had been four years since they had an event like this at Lyric Hall.
“The ghosts are happy,” he said to smiles and laughter.
He gave a short history of the building, including how it originated in 1913 as the West Rock Theater that became eclipsed by movie houses downtown in the 1920s.
“Who would imagine 104 years later we would be reenacting the original format of the building?” he added, receiving thunderous applause.
He then introduced “esteemed professor and Westville neighbor” Dudley Andrew, a professor of comparative literature and film studies at Yale, who spoke about and introduced the film. Andrew said he was “completely knocked out” that this event was happening.
“To have it here, it’s a dream,” he added.
After giving the audience some background about director Wim Wenders and lead actor Koji Yakusho, Andrew said he had not seen the film yet and was “so pleased” to be seeing it here.
“Here’s hoping there’s many more,” he added.
Best Video’s Rai Bruton said the collaboration between Best Video and Lyric Hall came about from a discussion with Cavaliere one day while he was visiting Best Video. She and Julie Smith, along with Teo Hernandez, visited the space and they “fell in love with it” after Cavaliere showed them cartoons on the screen. They decided to start with one screening a month of arthouse cinema, and will add to the frequency of showings based on demand.
Bruton said from her experience working at the now-closed Criterion movie theater on Temple Street that she knows how hard it can be for people to make it out on certain nights. However, for this event they had to turn people away, so they will definitely be considering multiple screenings on the same day in the future, or possibly more screenings per month. Whatever happens, Burton said she was “happy to be here” and believes that the time is now for collaborations such as this one.
“We are stronger together,” she said. “Places like this and Best Video will only last if we work together.”
Ready and waiting for the film to begin.
Perfect Days offered a touching, funny, and insightful look into the life of Hirayama: his morning routine includes taking care of tree seedlings before he is off to his job cleaning public restrooms. He has a daily lunch in the park, where he captures the light through the tree tops with his camera (the automatic film based kind!).
We see him driving through Tokyo before, during, and after work, taking in the sights of the city, listening to cassette tapes heavy on 1970s classics like Lou Reed, Van Morrison, and Patti Smith. He goes to bed each evening after reading a book. He eats at the same small spot in the subway station. He bathes in the public baths. The narrative is steeped in presence. You could hear a pin drop in the theater as everyone was taken deeply into Hirayama’s life, as well as the sights and sounds of Tokyo, which could be considered a character unto itself through Wenders’s loving eye.
The film could be called a character study as Hirayama, played with mesmerizing depth and grace by Yakusho, is on screen for almost the entire film, alone in his room, at his job, at the bath house, his many interactions with people he knows well and meets for a few fleeting moments notwithstanding. But an argument could be made that the character we come to focus on is ourselves, the viewer, as we respond to Hirayama’s reactions and interactions. As this is my second viewing of this film, I began to contemplate Hirayama as a mirror in which I could see my own place in the universe, as he is faced with disruptions to his routine and responds in a variety of ways.
Many years ago, my life was irrevocably altered by a poem called “Pursuit,” by Stephen Dobyns, which begins with the line “Each day I rush through what I do so I can do something else.” The poem stresses how we can let so many other things we may want to do fall by the wayside by not being present, and how we can stay so focused on moving forward in an attempt to remain unburdened by our past. That latter pursuit can seem lofty, and while Hirayama excels at things like spending time on reading and observing nature, the viewer eventually comes to find that his daily ritual is his own way of dealing (and not dealing) with what else is going on in the world, including when the past comes to find him, and when the disruptions of other people’s lives affect his.
His life is far from perfect — or is it? Even if we each define perfection differently, is it still something that we wish to achieve? And which days were perfect anyway — the ones where the same things happened over and over again, or the ones where routine was disrupted and connections were made? Wenders leaves the viewer with much to ponder, but the beauty of it all — whether it is the numerous close up shots of Hirayama’s face as he reacts, or the light that filters through the trees, or the repeating of the phrase “next time is next time. Now is now,” as if it was a song to be sung — resounds throughout the film and connects the viewer with themselves as well as the world around them.
The next film is scheduled for Dec. 17 at Lyric Hall. Please see the Best Video website and/or social media pages for more information.