LIKE many people, I went to see La La Land. I left behind the cold, grey rainswept streets of Salisbury and was transported to a sun-drenched world of song, dance and bright smiling faces. The opening sequence quite took my breath away (worth seeing for that alone!) Watching a film in a cinema (even one as quirky as the Salisbury Odeon) is an experience quite unlike any other. In complete darkness, with few distractions, you are drawn into the action on the large screen. It’s not an individual experience, it’s a collective one. The emotions drawn out of you by the film’s director are shared with those around you; sadness, joy, shock, terror, embarrassment for one of the characters. You are not alone – you collectively hold your breath, tap your toes, laugh and cry at the action with others. Sharing these feelings heightens the intensity of the film; its emotions are extended and enriched.

And if you go to see a film with someone – offspring, friend or lover – there’s a closeness as you leave. Your relationship is enhanced by the discovery of something else in common.

It’s quite different from watching a film at home. However big your TV (and in recent years they have grown huge, compared with the then giant 26ins of my youth) it can never command the whole of your attention in the way that a cinema screen can. There’s all the comings and goings – fetching a snack or drink, eating dinner, popping out to the loo, the dog arriving on your lap, that “ping” from your phone that you cannot ignore. (How many of us turn our phones off at home when we watch a film in the same way that we do at the cinema?) When you watch a film at home, you invite it into a space that is comfortable simply because you can do what you want there. When you watch a film at the cinema you are drawn into a world created by the film’s director and leave your comforts behind.

It’s not that one of these is better than the other, it’s simply that they are different. What is significant, however, is that this is all part of a much bigger picture in which entertainment, culture and participation in art and creativity has become “privatised” over the years. Humans are social beings – but the spaces in which we can explore our relationships with one another are becoming eroded by the allure of consumption.

When films are released on DVD, they are advertised “for you to own at home”. Beware. The very act of ownership may destroy the magic, escapism and opportunity for shared experience that films still offer.