Movies

The dimming quiets the buzz.  The laughter ceases and the murmurs hush; the stragglers linger off to the side craning their necks to find seats while survivors from the bathroom and concessions walk with the top halves of their bodies parallel to the floor so they won’t obstruct the view.  Though they will always be obstructing someone’s view.  The lights along the aisles fade as the front of the theater illuminates with anticipation.  The collective silence waits for one thing: the movie.

The previews.  The commercials.  The movie.  All explode from the back of the theater, from that white circle near the top of the wall, from the machine invented over a century ago and now delivering pictures world-wide.  The light escapes from the projector ever so slightly, and the beam gradually expands and dissipates over a crowd slouching in tall-backed cushy seats with buckets of fake-buttered popcorn and cups of sugar and caffeine in their armrests, unaware of the molecular miracles occurring above them.  That light hangs overhead collecting dust and dreams.  The dust sparkles in the light, but the dreams remain unseen.  Or the dreams are revealed.  Or they're forgotten.  Or they're realized.

The light shines over each patron, and it shines strongest over the middle.  It’s the brightest in the back, but it rests over the heads of horny teenagers more interested in what’s in each other’s pants than what’s on the screen; they have dreams, but they’re clouded by the overwhelming dust cloud interfering with those dreams.  The least interested in the movie, usually adults, sit in the dark corners of back where little light shines, whether they’re too horny to watch or too disinterested to find a better seat or too late to get a better seat.  The ones in the very front, the neck-breakers interested in the movie who’re either too late to the theater or too inexperienced in theater-going, feed off the light descending from the screen.  They’re only interested in the moment, what they see on the screen, who’s talking or who’s shooting or who’s dying.

It’s the ones in the middle that care the most, the people whose light above them shines with perfect clarity.  They dream the most and recognize the importance of the dreams of others.  Those dreams swim over their heads indifferent to dusty expectations of sex or food or drama or violence.  They seek loftier satisfaction: greatness, the same thing the dreamers who made the film seek.  The filmmakers instill their dreams onto the screen, and the people in the middle soak those dreams in and let the mingle with their own visions of greatness: Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, the plot twists of Chinatown, the roar of the helicopters in Apocalypse Now, Robert DeNiro’s bloodied living carcass in Raging Bull, the final scenes of Casablanca.  Then, as the lights fade overhead and shine again along the aisles, as the eaters and drinkers pile into the bathroom, as the horny teens rush their cars for a hump, as the broken necks ask each other whether they liked the movie, the ones in the middle ponder whether the filmmakers’ dreams stood up to their own.  After all, they are the stuff movies are made of.

--mdu