No. No, thank you. No, I don’t. (Can’t you just feel a rant coming on?).
I just finished watching a movie on this Sunday afternoon. I ate a whole bag of Organic Air-Popped Popcorn. It was a movie that I admit, I rented. I am not in the habit of renting movies. Let me clarify. I never rent movies. Last Christmas I got a six-month gift subscription to Net Flix and I would be willing to bet it was the least used membership they had. I can imagine the Net Flix employee given the task of filling my infrequent order, “Who is this? She has a subscription?”
I don’t know what possessed me, but I rented movies this weekend. And even when I rent movies, one of the three I take home will always be one I’ve already seen and adore, so that at least I know there’s a familiar friend in the bag. I just finished watching a movie that did not end the way it was supposed to. It was in the comedy section of Blockbuster. This wasn’t a freakin’ comedy. And I’ll admit, the way it ended for most of the characters was good enough, but the awkward outcast did not end up charming everyone, the guy ended up getting the girl’s sister, the girl ended up getting the guy’s brother and the mother of everybody died. She died, for cripes sake. The last scene was the first Christmas after the mother died and everybody stood around the Christmas tree remembering her. Her absence was so present she might have been in the room, but of course she wasn’t. Because she died.
The movie ended an hour ago. In the meantime I have eaten dinner (leftover Shrimp Curry and Jasmine Rice that I made last night), I have made coffee, have been watching the Patriots/Colts game for the past half hour and I am still freaking crying.
And this is why I hate movies. They mess with your head.
Just yesterday a woman asked me if I was going to see the movie Volver, the new movie by that hot Director-whatever-his-name-is. I said to her, “No probably not. Because you see, I hate movies.”
I have taught a Religion and Film course for the past three years and every first day of class I have begun the same way, “This is Religious Studies 298, Religion and Film. I am Professor Doire, and I hate movies.” I tell my students that I have not studied film criticism. I have not taken courses in film. I have read enough to know what to look for, but this is a religious studies course. Religion, I know. The movies we will see are simply a different form of “text” through which we can talk about the religious stuff that I want to talk about; Latin American Liberation Theology, Joan of Arc and the construction of the “holy woman,” Mary Magdalene, and the quest for the Holy Grail.
Of course I have favorite movies. One cannot be a fully active member of this culture without having been exposed to some movies, in fact, many. There are movies I will watch over and over again because I know what they are, I know how they end and I just love them. I love The Godfather I & II, The Mission, Die Hard I & III, The Rock, The Fugitive, The Untouchables, The Lion in Winter, everything Cary Grant ever did, and a few romantic comedies, French Kiss, While You Were Sleeping, Corrina, Corrina, The Princess Bride, Something’s Gotta Give and yes, ok a bunch of others. I feel secure with these movies. They won’t disappoint me. And I know when I sit down to look at them, I won’t have wasted 2 freakin’ hours. And don’t give me that, “Well, how do you know that the next movie you see won’t become one of your favorites too?” That’s a little like asking me to date a swamp full of frogs on the off chance that Prince Charming might be hiding in the rushes. (And I can just hear some of my girlfriends now, "Uhhh. Yuh. So... what's your problem?")
One of the problems I have with watching movies; the two-hour commitment. I don’t know if I can even describe what I feel when I have to sit down for two hours to watch a movie. I feel resentful. I feel anxious. I feel resigned. I’m almost pissed off. I want to rebel because I know that I am now trapped for two hours, committed to this thing that I may not even like. If it turns out that the movie was a waste of time, I’ll have spent two hours better used doing something else. And if it’s good, so what? In a couple of years, if someone asks if I’ve seen it, I’ll say something like, “ummmm… I think so.” That’s how memorable it will be. I figure, if there’s a movie out there that’s destined to be my next Godfather, or Die Hard, my kids will tell me.Years ago I spent a lot of time with someone who would ask me, “Have you seen this movie? Have you seen that movie?” Invariably I would say, “Well, parts of it.” He said, “Why do you always say you’ve seen parts of movies?” I saw “parts of movies” for much of my adult life because watching the movie would be the idea of someone else in my family and I’d get up from the sofa in the middle of it to do laundry, or start dinner, or answer the phone or stick needles in my eyes.
One of the other problems I have with movies is the messing-with-your-head thing. I am so affected by some movies it takes hours for me to get them out of my head. I enter into them fully, in spite of myself. And when they’re over, I’m still in them and I can’t get out. Someone I love would tell me, “That’s the whole point, Mom.” And I suppose it is always the point of storytelling; to get the listener to sympathize with the character, to portray something of the human condition, to inspire or repel, to simply tell a story. One might say the same thing about books, but it’s not the same. When I read a book, I can put it down and leave it for a while, regain my footing in the world and then return when I choose. The characters have days to develop and to become people I love or hate, admire or detest. By the time I am crying at the end of Jane Eyre or Les Miserables, Jane and Jean have unfolded before me in my own time. I have invited them in and they are beloved. A movie has two hours to suck you in, to move you to identify or sympathize or be appalled. As such, screenwriters and directors have to tug at you, pull at you, intensify the emotion, the pathos and frankly, well, I feel manipulated.
When I saw The Exorcist I couldn’t sleep in my bed for two weeks. I slept on the floor lest my bed begin to rise or shake and spin. When I saw Dances With Wolves I walked out of the movie theater, sat on the curb and wept. My ex-husband sat down beside me and asked, “Are you OK?” I replied,“No. No, I am not OK.” And I have heard all the criticisms of that movie; of how it once again depicts Native American stories through the eyes of a white man, of how Native Americans are idealized and romanticized, etc., etc. And I hear it is all the fashion to claim Native American heritage, but my maternal great grandmother was a Canadian Native American from Manitoba and it was a part of my childhood family folklore to tell the story of how she was burned out of her house and forced to move off her land. Perhaps it was that, perhaps it was simply the depiction of genocide on the BIG SCREEN, but no, no I was not OK. In fact, I was inconsolable. When I watched Life as a House I went into my bathroom and cried a cry that was a wailing heart-wrenched hurt, a hurt so big my eyes were still swollen the next day. Like, I NEED this??
Two friends of mine have commented that they know the one sure way to get me NOT to watch a movie is to recommend it. One of them lent me her copy of The Hours and said, “OK. Don’t watch this. I don’t want you to see this movie.” I had the movie for six months before I finally watched it, resentful, anxious, and resigned. In the meantime, she bought herself a second copy because she thought the Second Coming would occur before she got her movie back.
Do I sometimes feel left out of the conversation in which the new movie that everybody’s talking about is being talked about? I suppose I do. But I really don’t care. Because you see, I hate movies.
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