I was going to do so many things this evening. So many things.
I ended up watching the movie “Titanic” with my eldest daughter. She had never seen it, and following recent events had become curious. Even though I knew the story inside out, and have been a fan of just about anything Kate Winslet has ever acted in (yes, including Ammonite), Titanic still tore me to pieces.
Here’s the interesting thing - tonight it tore my eldest daughter to pieces too. She, who laughs at horror movies, and sits unmoved through romantic comedies.
This is new. And kind of wonderful.
I’ve always loved movies. I’m not sure if it’s the escapism, empathy with the characters, or the experience of being taken on a journey - walking in somebody else’s shoes for a couple of hours. I love when a writer, director, composer, and company of actors come together to make a whole that is somehow more than the sum of its parts.
I can’t pretend to know how much vision is involved in bringing words to the screen - or in writing those words in the first place. I’m privileged to know a wonderful script writer, and have been given early looks at some of her words. I tend to gaze at them in the same way a child does at a magician’s trick - wondering quite how I have been captured and transported so quickly and easily.
Getting back to our struggles to make it through Titanic without wiping tears from our cheeks and giving the game away, I wonder if it’s an age thing. An experience thing.
Perhaps as we compile life experience, we also build empathy. If we have faced at least a little of a situation unfolding in a movie, we can become invested in it - experiencing the same happiness, sadness, elation, fear, anger, and frustration as the characters in the unfolding story. Our own memories and emotions resurrected, re-constructed and re-shaped.
I’m not sure I have a point that I’m driving towards. I’m just being curious. Wondering how the mechanics of the universe work - how the cogs connect. Maybe it’s best that we never figure it out.