Life at the Movies

When was the last time you went to a movie and the audience applauded at the end? (Perhaps these days, the question is, “When was the last time you went to a movie in a movie theater?!”)

Hollywood was pulling all the right strings in the movie I went to tonight and you could complain that you were being manipulated, but hey, isn’t that exactly what art does? Asks you to “suspend disbelief” and get swept up into a world? And if that world is the 60’s in the U.S. and the characters are multi-dimensional and complex and the acting is extraordinary and they’re traveling around parts of the country and the music is (sometimes) great and there is believable and deeply moving transformations happening with each of the two main characters, well, those are precisely the right strings for me. I accompanied the applause with unabashed tears and though it diminishes it all to call it a “feel-good” movie, that’s mostly how people felt it and what’s wrong with that? Couldn’t we all use a little feel-good after two years of “What the hell?!!!!”

So treat yourself and may I suggest, go to an actual movie theater and if it’s a single screen or old neighborhood theater not in a mall, extra points. Don’t wait for it on Netflicks and watch it alone in your home. Maybe go with a whole group of friends, dinner before and dessert after and re-live it again in your conversation about favorite parts.

Oh, would you like to know the name of the movie? Well, there’s a color in the title and another noun that has to do with reading. Good luck and enjoy!