At The Movies: The Nugget Theater

See Conclave, and other films, in the company of your neighbors.

Last weekend, I went to the movies.

I did not sit, per usual, on my very comfortable couch, scrolling through Netflix or HBO and hitting “play.” I put on adult clothes, drove to the Nugget Theater in Hanover, NH, bought Sunday matinee tickets, ordered up two popcorns and a bottle of water, and settled into two on the aisle to watch Conclave. And, had a fabulous time that caused my husband and I to muse upon the experience and offer this suggestion to ourselves on the drive home: Let’s become regular movie-goers.

According to General Manager Jeff Graham, Conclave has been putting numerous posteriors in the seats, which is one measure of how well a movie theater is doing. It’s a good film with an all-star cast dominated by the gripping performance of Ralph Fiennes and the glow and grit of the incomparable Isabella Rossellini. But the Nugget, like all movie theaters, could benefit from larger audiences overall. Unfortunately, in these times, movie-going sounds like a quaint activity that often served as a proper date, proper dates being another cultural phenomenon that could use some resuscitation.

Cultural changes aside, COVID did not help the bottom line, closing the Nugget for eighteen months, followed by the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes of last year, which according to Graham has resulted in a dearth of films in the pipeline. For patrons, cost is an issue: our tickets and concession stand purchases—because who would be without their popcorn—totaled approximately thirty dollars for the two of us. And the obvious factor is the presence of numerous streaming platforms that for a modest fee allows access to just about an unlimited number of films that can be viewed while parked on that convenient and, again, very comfortable couch. There’s also that pesky parking problem that haunts Hanover, especially the 2-hour meters near the theater that don’t jive with a common movie length of 2 hours plus.

General Manager Jeff Graham calls the Nugget “an iconic main-street movie theater.” It has had three locations in Hanover since it began in 1916 on West Wheelock Street (in the space with the building “on stilts” which was once a bookstore). When the original structure burned to the ground, the theater was hosted in Webster Hall before finding its current home on South Main Street.

Of the course the question I posed to Jeff was “What do you say to someone who asks, given the fact that I can watch a movie at home, why would I come to the theater?” He responded that “it’s getting out of the house, seeing a film on the big screen, eating popcorn with real butter . . . And supporting a local business.” The Nugget is owned by a non-profit, The Hanover Improvement Society; money from ticket sales and concession purchases is funneled back into the community.

I admitted that had Conclave been available on Netflix, it is likely I would have chosen to watch it at home. But it wasn’t, and I am glad that it lured me to the Nugget. The cinematography, for one, would not have been served by viewing it on my iPad screen. More importantly, however, was this: Conclave is a suspenseful movie with more than one twist and turn. There is nothing like company when you’re on the edge of your seat. “You could hear a pin drop,” said more than one review of this film. Except of course when, at several points during the screening, you could hear the sharp and spontaneous intake of breath, your own and everyone’s around you. And when the lights went up, people nodded to each other, faces quizzical and delighted, as if to ask, “wasn’t that a surprise!”

The Nugget Theater’s website contains its schedule of films (click here.) As the late film critic Roger Ebert used to say, perhaps, (in my case, most likely at a matinee), “I’ll see you at the movies.”

(Photo, top, historic photo of the Nugget, courtesy of the Nugget Theater. Photo, above, cast of Conclave: Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini)

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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.