Sleeping with the Movies

As for me, I remained a hard-core print person whose life continued to be framed by the movies, in one way or another. But I now find it almost impossible to watch a mainstream movie in a multiplex cinema. The minute someone tears open their Twizzlers, I glare at them and change seats. Sometimes this happens two or three times per viewing.

But I will still happily attend film festivals, where people chew quietly and pay attention to the screen. And the experience of watching movies at the Cannes Film Festival (to which my husband schleps me, just as he once schlepped film cans) can be exquisite. The prints are as fresh as sushi, the projection is flawless, there are no ads to sit through, and the person beside you might very well be Roger Ebert—and he will not be talking. Or eating. For one thing Ebert’s on a diet, and for another no food is allowed in the theatres at Cannes. Outside it’s a chaotic mob scene, but inside the Lumière theatre the worst thing that ever happens is when some dweeb critic with a light-up pen decides to take notes. Otherwise there is nothing between all of us sitting there and the movie on the screen. If the filmmaker is skillful enough, we get to surrender for a few hours, in the dark.

And even after twenty-eight years of marriage, when my husband and I leave the theatre, go to a bar, look at each other, and say, “What did you think?,” it’s still an open question. Movies may change, but our desire to relate through them doesn’t seem to be in any danger.