On the Joy of Going to the Movies

I have just returned from seeing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I liked it. A lot. But finally, it really doesn’t matter what I thought of this particular film. Last week I saw Batman Begins. I liked that, too. Well, actually, I wasn’t crazy about the latter film, but I really liked going to the movies. Let me qualify that: I love going to the movies. I have over the years seen a great many films: when I lived in New York City I went to the cinema at least three times a week. Sometimes, I would come home from school on a Friday afternoon (I was a high school English teacher. Maybe I still am?), and I would go for my daily run in Central Park (oh, how I loved running in Central Park); then I would come home, shower, pack a small dinner, and go off to the Thalia Theater at 95th and Broadway for a double feature. Sometimes you had to hold the sandwich high to keep the little rats away, but I soon learned that even rats aren’t crazy about tempeh and tofu. I ate a lot of tempeh and tofu sandwiches. To my mind, the film experience was a perfect ending to imperfect weeks.

I love sitting in the dark. Smack in the middle of the theater, preferably. Though, I really don’t care where I am seated so long as I can see the screen unobstructed and have easy access to the bathrooms. I don’t need popcorn, but there are, at times, a type of film that calls for popcorn—usually, this type of film is a comedy. I had popcorn today at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I love getting to the show a bit early, and bringing some reading material—The Nation, In These Times, The Forward—once, I even brought Michel Foucault into the theater and read the same paragraph until the previews began. I love sitting in the dark on a hot summer early afternoon with the air conditioning on high power. I love sitting in the dark on a cold winter’s late afternoon snuggled in my sweater and lined jeans. I like being alone even when I am with another. As Thoreau says, “There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about . . . In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.” Silence is what I seek in the theater.

And when the film is over, I crave a social meal or a friendly and fine beer. To talk about the film, of course, but more to talk about life with the film as stimulus.

I know that there is a strain of theory that suggests that sitting in the darkened theater is like dreaming. Maybe it is so. Ah, what isn’t like dreaming, except maybe dreaming. Thoreau again: “For in dreams we but act a part which must have been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt could discover some waking consent thereto . . . Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” I go to the movies to get away from the world and to confront it. I go to the movies to sit in the dark so that my life is just a bit brighter.