Why Do We Go to the Movies?

Seldom have two films represented for me two very different reasons that we go to the movies. For as long as humankind has had language, there have been storytellers, and we have gathered around the fire—or the cool fire—for the experience of going along for the ride.

 

But what experience are we seeking when we go to a film? Sometimes, we just want a mood-lifting hour and a half. Other times, we seek to understand people or cultures that are foreign to us. Occasionally, we want an experience that will make us recognize the best qualities in human beings. (In fact, psychologists have now discovered that even seeing a movie about someone doing altruistic deeds can make you more likely to do them yourself.) It was seeing these two films—"Take the Lead" and "Ice Age 2: the Meltdown"—in close proximity that made me think about what exactly lures us into a darkened theater. Each of these films does well what it sets out to do—but what they set out to do is very different.

 

 

But "Take the Lead" is not a documentary. It’s a parable about how each of us comes to a point of decision in our lives--and how those life choices can truly go either way. It’s about how important people are to each other, and how drastically important having a mentor is to kids and teens. In this story, I was as moved by the unsung support given to the students by the janitor as by the movie’s lead.

 

Seldom does the audience with which I see a film impress me as much as the film itself, but there’s a first time for everything. My 11-year-old son Jonathan and I were two of what I’m guessing were a handful of journalists in a Manhattan screening. The rest of the theater was packed with inner-city high school kids who had been given free tickets by their teachers.

 

Usually I find it annoying when people talk out loud during a movie. But these were the kids from the world that the movie was about, and watching it with them was like having a DVD commentary track by actual inner-city kids. (“Walk away, boy, you walk away!” “What you doing? Don’t let him in, girl!”)

 

These were good kids who wanted to see the characters on screen make the right choices. I’m guessing it’s not often they see their milieu represented in a film that isn’t violent. In fact, at the end of the movie, when one character is waiting for her dance partner to show up—and he finally does, bloodied and dirty—a girl in the audience said, “Just like Cinderella!” and you realize how little it takes for many kids to feel they’ve won the prize. And when the whole theater burst into applause when two inner-city characters finally waltzed, you felt they’d really been given a whole new idea of what could constitute “happily ever after.”