Weekly Monday-morning cinema visits became a sacred ritual of escape and shared immersion. Popcorn, a big screen, and a darkened room enabled deep emotional engagement. Film brings life experiences, sensitivities, and memories to the screen and makes viewers feel their selves and characters' selves indistinguishable. After screenings, prolonged conversations revealed strong emotions and unsettling truths, especially about hands-on mothering. On-screen mothers displayed despair, strength, vulnerability, and unashamed love, provoking identification, repulsion, shame, grief, and joy. The cinema's darkness invited the unconscious, freed feelings, and allowed tears and grimaces; returning to light often left viewers spellbound and jolted back to reality.
I have always loved film. Before the days that I started writing for my career, my friend and I would sneak out to a local cinema on a Monday morning at 11 am, buy some popcorn, and watch a film on the big screen. This became a sacred ritual. We were both enchanted with the way film brings life experiences, sensitivities, and memories so faithfully to the screen.
We often felt that our selves and those of the characters were indistinguishable. After each film, we had endless post-mortems, and we were amazed and often unsettled by the strong emotions and the truths stirred by the film. This became a safe place to identify and indulge our own fears, emotions, and realities. We cherished escaping from our daily lives to the dark space of old-fashioned cinema with a big screen, a darkened room, and the attendant gasps and silences.
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