An Ode to the Movie Theater

In these past couple weeks of quarantine I can’t help but reflect, appreciate, and admire the sanctity that is the movie theater. Day after day as I sit in my bed watching film after film and jumping from one tv series to the next I find myself missing the act of going to the movies. Of putting on a pair of jeans and a t shirt, bringing a sweater “just in case it’s cold” knowing that the theater is always on the chilly side.

As my mom comes in my room to talk to me or I hear my little brothers TV from his room or my dog comes in my room with those eyes saying “take me outside,” I cannot help but long for the isolation of the movie theater. The experience of complete and utter immersion with what appears before me on screen. The feeling of connection that is so complete and pure that only seems to happen while at the movies.

To me, there is nothing like being immersed in the pitch black darkness of the movie theater. The plush red seats, the smears of butter on your fingers as you dive in for more popcorn, the feeling of complete anxiety when you (of course) have to pee right at the climax of the film. Nothing compares. And nothing ever could ever compare. There are feelings and actions so uniquely given at the movie theater. It is a nameless wave of anxiety and excitement that mix together for a couple of magical hours where there is nothing and no one except what is up there on that big screen.

It saddens me to think that more and more people shy away from this truly unequivocal experience to simply stay at home, even before the social distancing. For reasons that I could only assume. Maybe out of cheapness, to save a few dollars or laziness, to not have to get up off the couch or merely, a lack of sentimentality.

Sentimentality is a good word, because to me that is what the movie theater is, a place of nostalgia. A place to get lost. Lost in the film that you are seeing, completely immersed in the characters lives, lost in time, lost in space. The movie theater so uniquely creates this feeling of the thrill of adventure mixed with a sense of complete serenity.

As your eyes are engulfed by the larger-than-life screen in front of you, it feels as if there was no past and no future, only the present moment. Whatever worries about that stupid thing you said in class the day before or what homework is due tomorrow fades away as the opening credits advance on the silver screen. There is only the present, living moment to moment with the characters in the story. Letting their lives take over your own.

That awareness of being alive, being human that the film strikes into you seems only possible in the presence of that magical screen. A television screen at home, or god forbid a *cringes* phone screen, can never recreate that feeling.

Now, don’t get me wrong I am not a complete snob, I still do the late-night 2 A.M. Netflix laptop-on-the-bed binge watch sessions (a mouthful, I know), but those are run-of-the-mill nights reserved for whatever latest series caught my eye. The two situations are incomparable to one another because the experiences they create are unequal in every way possible. The only thing they truly have in common is that you are both watching something and that is about it.

The last movie I saw in theaters was Bong Joon-Ho’s "Parasite" once in Chicago before I went back to school and once at the Film Society of Lincoln Center while at school. Each time the ticket cost 12 dollars exactly and I paid in exact cash because it is a sin to not pay in cash if there is no change involved. Each time I brought my own water bottle but bought popcorn. Each time I sat through the movie in awe, cherishing each moment on that gargantuan screen, lost in time, lost in space.

Both times, as the movie ended and the credits rolled on the screen there was a collective silence in the theater, a simple moment of connection between me and everyone else in there. Knowing we had just gone through a whole story together, that for one moment in time we were able to live these different lives with these different characters. A collective awareness that it was only in a setting like a movie theater that this experience could have happened. At the late night, double-feature picture show.