To Film or Not to Film

I’m dabbling in a movie love affair. I say dabbling because I’m only, like, flirting with film. Watching the There Will Be Bloods and the No Countries for Old Men, the Little Miss Sunshines; waiting to relax and sip a drink with the Junos and Atonements; catching up on the Magnolias and Requiems for a Dream; DVR-ing the Chinatowns and Tsotsis; avoiding the Mans of the Year. I’m no movie connoisseur. Still drinking bargain merlots with the bourgeois eyes of someone who hasn’t yet taken in the Godfather and who fell asleep watching Amelie.

Although, my maturation level has reached new heights: Now I turn on the subtitles of EVERY MOVIE just so I can soak in every single word. In fact, my husband has said that I’m every deaf man’s dream. Meanwhile, I dream of movies.

I dream of my Flirtatious Movie Love Affair progressing into something more. I dream of intimate knowledge. I want to learn about its angles and sideways glances and cameras. I want to learn the ins and outs of screenwriting. And, fittingly, somewhere within this affair is my frivolous life Dream, a Dream that I haven’t yet begun to attack, a Dream that is still very much only a dream. (Probably because I won't go public and subject myself to a friendly dose of accountability.)

My move toward movies actually began with my infatuation with words. Books, etc. Once I started reading about film regularly, I began to see it differently. I began to see it as an art form that has the capacity to possess not only beautiful, witty, smart, emotional language (like a book!) but also drama, cinematography, music … You get the idea. It’s a whole team of talents.

I automatically feel a sort of bond with someone who likes the movies that I like. Case in point: While filling out the below survey, I knew that I was missing some key movies. Movies that, after I watched them, left me sitting on the couch satisfied because I had participated in an experience rather than an entertainment. But, since I’m now 25 and experiencing an inexplicable memory loss, I looked up (thanks, Facebook) a couple of close friends’ movies. Divinely, there were my missing pieces. There were my friends – people who I feel really, truly know me – holding my pieces. I didn’t know specifically what I would find when I looked up their movie lists, just that their movie lists would undoubtedly connect with mine.

My preferences within media – specifically within writings, books, films, sometimes music – are like little manifestations (thesaurus, please give me a less scary word) of what inside me threads me to other individuals. And I think that thread is a shared interest in the human condition: why we do what we do, why we feel what we feel, why we hide what we hide and why we expose what we expose. It’s the raw presentation of human emotion/love/sin to which I’m attracted.

Because when we understand what’s most deeply inside of us, then we can understand what exactly it is that God is healing. And in that I find security. I find security in knowing that there are others out there who aren’t afraid of a little mess, and that there are others out there with whom I can do a little cleaning up.