They have always been that, for me: The Movies—and yes, it is necessary to capitalize what some of us mean when we call (however sincerely) a movie theater ‘The Movies,’ or even ‘The Pictures,’ as my grandparents used to say. The Movies isn’t just a place or an experience: it’s an atmosphere. It saturates. Where else can you go and escape into something that is, with the exception of 3D movies, completely flat and empty of the liveness of plays or concerts, but that nonetheless feels absolutely alive, and even at times realer than real life?
In a recent interview, writer Naomi Fry explained the purpose reading gave her. “It was a way for me to understand the world…and it was also important to my self-conception,” she told passerby. Specifically:
What was I if I wasn’t a reader, if I wasn’t a person who was interested in books and culture? This had to do with a certain level of pretension, but it was also purely emotional.
I feel the same way as Fry does (including the begrudging acknowledgment of pretension). And I find it telling that she wonders ‘what’ she would be if not a reader, rather than ‘who’: it acknowledges the distinction between the identities that we climb into knowing what they are, versus those that we create for ourselves, cobbling together a life story through whatever comes our way. A Reader Does X; I do Y, I guess?
At my favorite movie theater in DC, the Saturday matinee showings are some of the cheapest and, usually, the emptiest. A few weekends ago, I went to the 12PM screening of Broker (which is excellent! see it!) where there could not have been more than nine people, including myself, in attendance.
This theater is a place for The Movies. They sell wine and vegan cookies at concessions: not a guarantee of what they’ll show in theaters, but a stereotype, probably, in part because it’s true. Elites want to take your dairy away and swill cabernet!
They screen movies that receive standing ovations at film festivals—unless, that is, the movie is directed by James Cameron, a man who seems like a prime candidate for screaming “I AM SUBTLETY INCARNATE” during a silent Quaker Meeting for Worship; and whose latest film Avatar: The Way of Water was recently nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
At this movie theater, the individual movie theaters are underground, a small maze that interlocks into angles and edges. Occasionally, you’ll catch sound radiating from one of the theaters into the corridor; usually, it’s from a fight scene.
To me, this place provides the feeling of immersion with none of the potential claustrophobia: here I am, surrounded by these sensations. And I am okay.
Here, I think of Marie Howe’s poem “What the Living Do,” which Ella Risbridger uses, in full, as an epigraph to The Year of Miracles, the cookbook-memoir she wrote during the height of the pandemic. In the poem, the speaker marvels at the normalcy of life—how it just happens, keeps happening, after somebody you love dies. That person is gone and you are still here. How?
“For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in
the street, the bag breaking,
I’ve been thinking: "This is what the living do.”
It’s a different type of grief, estrangement, but as with any grief, it can lodge a lead stone inside you. I’ve felt that way for the past few weeks; sitting in a movie theater with strangers, laughing too loudly and crying too much (compared to what they were doing), I took out the stone and sat it down next to me, where it stayed, silent, all the way through the credits.
There is a profile of Roger Ebert, written by Chris Jones in 2010 for Esquire, that I think about with the kind of regularity usually ascribed to the rain: it will come, I just don’t know when.
Although the piece covers Ebert’s career as a film critic, it is more interested in the evolution of Ebert’s writing, namely how he transitioned his reviews into a staggering output of blog posts that grappled with what the movies do: life. It was an evolution that arose, partially, out of the cancer that took Ebert’s jaw and, with it, his ability to speak.
The piece opens with Ebert in his element: at work. Jones watches Ebert (alongside a coterie of other film critics) watch Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodóvar’s then-new film. “He radiates kid joy,” Jones writes. “Ebert scribbles constantly, his pen digging into page after page, and then he tears the pages out of his notebook and drops them to the floor around him.” The movie ends; the lights come up. Jones is still watching Ebert. “It looks as though he’s sitting on top of a cloud of paper.”
When I read that line, I hear the sound of snow falling, which to me is a sound—or maybe, it effects sound. When it snows (which it hasn’t in D.C.), it’s as if somebody has put their hand on the radio, not to turn it down but to muffle it, quietly, as an act of simple kindness.
In a “remembrance” Matt Ufford wrote for GQ after Ebert’s passing, Ufford talked about Ebert’s blog: Ebert’s relentless outpouring of belief. “I read "Go gentle into that good night," a rumination on death that touches on religion and metaphysics, and is bolstered by art and poetry: two thousand words from the edge of the abyss that have more wisdom than most books I’ve read,” Ufford wrote.
From Ebert:
"Kindness" covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
I clicked on the link to read Ebert’s post myself, but a blank page informed me that “the requested URL was not found.” Ebert died in 2013.
When I saw Broker a few weeks ago, I overheard two women, before the movie began, talking loudly with each other. I
Woman 1: “Jean is actually having surgery on February 4.”
Woman 2, thoughtfully: “That’s a Saturday.”
After the movie ended, one of them said loudly to the other, “I don’t know what happened with the ending. Do we know this woman?”
They could have been friends, sisters, partners; regardless of what they were to each other, it was clear that love was there.
I followed them up the escalators to exit. The woman working the ticket counter waved at them. “See you ladies next week!” she said, and they waved back.
They must be weekly regulars for weekend matinees—or at least, that’s the story I want to be true, the way that I want a story of kindness to be true: that we can be kind to each other, not only in the spaces where we don’t have to talk to each other. After all, it’s easy to love people when you don’t have to know them.
What’s your small good thing of the week?
Let Me Tell You About Gidget
When you are perfect, life is nothing but ennui.
A Continual Note of Gratitude
Like everything I write these days, this was written during sessions of The Writers’ Hour, an online hourly Zoom writing session hosted by the London Writer’s Salon. LWS is an online writing community so lovely and supportive that reminds me why I love writing in the first place.
I will be legitimately angry if Avatar wins over Everything Everywhere All At Once, which clearly should be the one to win everything.
Oh I loved every bit of this! Going to the movies solo is one of my favourite things to do, and I also have my favourite theatre where no one really goes.
The whole experience is incredibly special and sacred for me and you brought all those feelings and more into this piece.
I cried at the end, you really hit something with me with this one. As always, I am grateful for your words.