Growing Older with the Movies

One of the questions Diane raised in starting this page "On Becoming an Elder" goes something like this:  why would anyone want to remain forever young?

I know that when it comes to movies, I definitely do not want to remain forever young.

My life as a young man was significantly shaped by my pursuit of graduate degrees in English.  I succeeded in my pursuit of a master's degree and failed to complete my doctorate.

My experience with the movies, during this time, was also shaped by my pursuit of graduate degrees in English.

Being a graduate student somehow led me to think that I had to be a movie critic, ready not only to render judgment about the movies I saw, but to have a talking essay ready to go if I were asked (or wasn't asked) what I thought of a movie.

Back then, I'd say I assessed movies in much the same way I assessed student papers.  I judged movies on their structural strength.  Did every part of the movie contribute to the whole movie?  Was the movie coherent?  Did the parts of the movie and the movie as a whole contribute to something like a thesis?

I enjoyed scores of movies during this time.  But, at the same time, I was working too hard during the movie to formulate my "reading" of the movie, concentrating too much, out of my insecurity, on wanting to sound intelligent when I talked with others about the movie.  Too often, the movie, in my mind, was about what would happen after the movie than it was about the movie itself.

This is what being young with the movies was for me.

Why would I want to remain forever young in this way?

I don't.

Now, as I approach my sixties, as I grow older with the movies, I can no longer answer the questions I used to stew over so much:  Did I like that movie?  Was it good?  Do I recommend it?

I read a lot of comments about movies, especially online, and I listen a lot to what others have to say about movies.

Most of the time, these comments sound like consumer reports.  Thumbs up.  Thumbs down.  Five stars. Two stars.

The criteria for assessing the movies often breaks down into these kinds of standards:  Was it realistic (when it's not a fantasy movie)?  Was it true to its source, if it's based on a book, play, comic book series, or graphic novel?  How was the ending?  How does it compare with other movies by this director?  How was the acting?  Was it a good script?  And, I'd say above all, did it meet the viewer's expectations -- expectations raised by having read the book (or other source), knowing the director's other work, wanting a good laugh, wanting to be scared, by who was cast, and so on.

Most movie viewers resist change or difference.

They want stories they've read or seen to unfold in the movie the way they've experienced them before.    

They don't want Woody Allen to try out new things.  Remember the outrage when he released Interiors?  Many said it just wasn't a Woody Allen movie and, if you've followed Woody Allen over the years, he's always being written and talked about in terms of his past work, as if it's a way to assess his present work.

Many viewers don't want a reimagining of familiar characters, as if the character is eternal. Have you read the comments about Ben Affleck being cast as Batman? No one has seen a second of his performance, yet the "reviews" are already in. The same thing happens when a new James Bond or Dr. Who is cast.

Viewers often want actors to repeat past performances. They want the Arnold Schwarzenegger they've seen before.  I'm still struck, thirty-three years later, by the, well, the outrage I heard back in 1980 when Mary Tyler Moore played an icy, deeply pained, self-protective mother in Ordinary People, a character nothing like her bubbly and loveable characters Laura Petrie and Mary Richards.

And then there's Shakespeare.  Many people I read online or listen to in conversation want Shakespeare's plays, when made into a movie, to have a familiar look, to present the play in ways they consider appropriate to Shakespeare and, most often, this is traditional. 

I have grown older with the movies by rejecting all the ways I've just described for experiencing a movie.

I do all I can to see movies (and plays) with a clear mind, clear of expectations, clear of knowledge about the movie, clear of what has come before it, and clear of critical language that might move me to analyze the movie while it's happening.

I let the movie work on me, and try to experience the movie on its terms, not on mine. 

I saw Much Ado About Nothing a few weeks ago.  I'd read nothing about this production.  I sat down to watch it as if I'd never seen this play produced before, either on stage or in the movies, even though I had been in the play as Antonio and I had seen it performed over a dozen times.

Above all, I didn't let myself be captive to Kenneth Branaugh's magnificent movie version of the play from 1993.  I've seen that movie over a dozen times, loved every viewing of it, but I cleared my mind of it before seeing Joss Whedon's version.

I loved Joss Whedon's movie.  I loved the experience of seeing this movie as if it were the only version of Much Ado About Nothing ever made.

But, even as I saw it with a clear mind, the movie triggered scores of joyous memories for me, memories of being in the play, memories of all those times I went to the theater to see this play/movie.  I was seeing it for the first time and, at the same time, the movie worked on me by calling up memories that made tears run down my face.

It's why I can't say whether it's a good movie.  I can't recommend it.  My experience was so personal, my enjoyment so connected with my own love and my own memories that I have no idea whether it would be "good" for someone else.

This is how have grown older with movies.

I am not trying to account for the worth of movies based on supposedly commonly held standards of what makes a movie "good".

I let the movie happen.  I try to enter into its world, leaving other worlds behind, and let the movie move me on its terms.  Sometimes during the movie I'm moved by visual beauty.  Sometimes the movie launches me into past experiences I've had.  At other moments, it's the music. Often I can't, and don't care to, account for the aching pleasure I feel.

Whatever happens, it occurs primarily because I'm not thinking of it as a "Spielberg movie" or as a "Woody Allen movie" or as a type of movie that "should" do certain things.  I'm not thinking about what or who Lincoln should be.  I'm just letting Lincoln be who Lincoln is in this movie.  These characters in these movies are not real to me anywhere but in the movie while it's playing.

I'm surrendering.

I'm not suspending disbelief.

I'm believing.

Then I sit through the credits.  I don't much read them.  I listen to the music.  The music brings past passages of the movie back to life and creates a last impression of the movie.  Staying for the credits, for me, is like ending a rib eye steak dinner with a glass of cognac. Or, it's like staying for the postlude at church. 

It completes the experience. 

It's one of the joys of growing old.