Reel Life

Many of us are thinking about movies, now that the Oscar nominations are out. Personally, I don’t care about the nomination count, who or what was snubbed, not even what  racial or ethnic groups were slighted. I just like movies. But a couple of months ago, I read a blog by a very successful businessman who said one of the secrets of his success was not wasting time watching films.

We all know that movies represent an escape, but are they a waste of time? Some more than others, of course. At their best, though, they can teach in a way that other media can’t. History, for instance. The Roman Empire, British royalty through the centuries. The Civil War (and every other war we can think of). Presidential assassinations. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and lately, even Brexit. Yes, they distort and often play fast and loose with the facts, but even when they get things wrong, movies can still inspire us to do our own fact-checking on the subject involved.

Speaking of taking us places, that’s what foreign films do. I remember attending a film festival and seeing an entry from Burkina Faso. Where on Earth is that? I had to look it up – turns out it’s in Africa. It showed me through drama what it’s like to live there, and how the people think and communicate, in a special way that even traveling there might not reveal.

We all know that movies teach us fashion and lifestyle. The downside is that the perfect folks we see on screen often impose unrealistic expectations on us. So maybe the upside is, we take better care of ourselves. I remember that when I moved from the East Coast to Southern California, it seemed like everybody might have been a movie star.

In another sphere, movies can actually teach us how to feel. I have been convinced that most people are not born with empathy or compassion, and even if some of us were, we may not know how they work until we see them demonstrated in a movie. We learn about ourselves: what makes us laugh, or cry, or afraid.

On a public radio show I like, they have an occasional segment with a woman who says that movies are her church. I get that. I grew up in New York City and remember when movie theaters were like cathedrals, not like today’s megaplexes. The Loew’s theater on East 72^nd Street had a fancy baroque interior with pinpoint lights like stars on the ceiling, and what looked like actual clouds moving across the sky. Sometimes that was more entertaining than the movie.

By that successful businessman’s standards, I guess I must be a miserable failure, but if it’s because I spend too much time at the movies, I think I can live with it.