Jamie and I have a tradition. We end each of our 180 days trips in Sydney and we spend our last evening in Australia at the St George Open Air Cinema.
This is, without any doubt whatsoever, the most spectacular setting for any movie theater in the world. It sits right at the eastern edge of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden and overlooks the Sydney Opera House, the iconic Harbour Bridge, and the Sydney skyline. Giant fruit bats soar overhead and harbour cruise boats pass behind the screen.
It’s so incredibly beautiful that it sometimes becomes difficult to keep your attention on the screen.
Tonight’s film was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a great, great film. The only problem is that we’re not quite sure how it ended.
Rain was in tonight’s forecast, so the Open Air Cinema handed out plastic ponchos to everyone as they came in the gate. But it was an absolutely beautiful evening — warm with a gentle breeze across the harbour.
Well, that’s an accurate description of the weather for the first 105 minutes of the film, but with ten minutes left, rain began pouring down like sugar on my morning corn flakes. It came down so quickly and so hard that everyone in the audience was immediately drenched (everyone includes both of us).
Five hundred people simultaneously began struggling to get inside their plastic ponchos. Between the sound of all those ponchos rustling, the rain pelting down on all that plastic, and the subsequent sound being muffled by the ponchos’ hoods, I don’t think anyone in attendance has any idea how the film ended.
All I know is that Frances McDormand ended up in a car with someone I didn’t expect her to end up in a car with. (I left that intentionally vague in order not the spoil the ending for anyone, despite the fact that I am not certain how it ended.)
Luckily, Jamie and I will have a chance to correct that problem on our flight home. Qantas is showing Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri on all international flights this month.
And don’t forget Harry’s meat pies!