life is better when we all have a movie to love.
life is better when i have a movie to love. especially a new movie. a fresh screenplay to analyze, acting performances to interrogate with the tiniest microscope, scenes that will resonate with me for years to come.
but i think life is truly better when we all have a movie to love. at a time when the appeal of the movie theater experience has largely been decimated (reputation AND audience size), it has been utterly fascinating to see and feel everyone running to the theater right now.
along with warranted pushback about increased prices and decreasing social etiquette over the past 5+ years, we’ve generally convinced ourselves that seeing a movie together with an audience is an overrated experience, and one that can be easily and more comfortably replicated in the home. i simply don’t believe that’s true, and if it were, we wouldn’t be seeing the current #sinners phenomenon. if it were better to wait for streaming, we would be doing it. we’ve done it before. if that shared experience didn’t matter, it wouldn’t. but it so clearly does. we’re craving sharing our lives and space and art and humanity with others – not to live on top of one another, or be overwhelmed and burdened by our proximity, but to laugh and cry and hopefully relate more deeply than we did before the lights went down.
it’s different than a new television series or even a new album dropping, because while those can be communal experiences, they’re more often solitary or shared within the confines of one’s home. the movies have always been different – like concerts, if you’re paying money for a ticket, you’re opting into a me and we experience. it’s not only an agreement between each person and the director about the film; it’s also an agreement between each person and the audience they’re sitting in. it’s an agreement to try our best to have a great time with one another. it feels incredible to see us actively doing that again. to see us wanting to do it. shrugging off our grievances to appreciate incredible art and value the shared theater experience. life is better like this.
