Movies speak to child

Film takes us where we cannot go

The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives …”

— Walker Percy

As a little boy, my mother would drop me off at the downtown cinema almost every Saturday, and for the next couple of hours, I would fight pirates, ride the open range or even fly into space. Sitting in the dark, watching the flickering images play out on the large screen, I would experience laughter, joy, heartbreak, exhilaration, outrage and moments of tenderness — shared fragments with a room full of strangers who felt these moments both independently and together. Film, said the late critic Roger Ebert, can take us where we cannot go. It can also take our minds outside their shells. For a little boy in a little town, it was the start of a beautiful friendship.

When I was 8 years old, my grandparents who lived in St. Petersburg, Fla., came to visit us for a week. One evening, my mom suggested we all get in the car and go see the movie The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston, at the drive-in. When my grandparents made the comment this would be the first film they had seen in more than 20 years, I was beside myself in excitement. Surely, they would be thrilled to their very core when Moses parted the Red Sea! After the movie was over, I eagerly said, “Granny, how did you like the movie?” She soberly replied “It was OK.” That was my first lesson that not everyone loved the movies like I did.

When I was 10 years old, my parents took me to see the film, Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O’Toole. Watching this sweeping epic historical drama — based on the life of T.E. Lawrence during World War I in the Arabian Peninsula — I was smitten by his heroics and wanted to know more after the movie. The next weekend, I went to the city library and checked out Lawrence’s autobiography, titled Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Now, up to this time, I was reading only young adult books or abridged classics, but in my hands was a 700-page, complex work of high literary aspiration which explored in detail war, cruelty, deception and honor. It took me a month to finish it, but its impact was a revelation. For the first time, these concepts were opened to me, and while I did not fully understand much of it, I realized life was not as black and white as I once thought. The shell was broken. From that point on, I started making my way through much of the literary canon at the library and never looked back. It’s a love of reading that holds me to this day.

I think one of cinema’s greatest traits is its ability to generate emotion in its audience. I remember watching the comedy Blazing Saddles in a sold-out theater. The audience laughed as one, in unison at every Mel Brooks gag — it was a visceral experience I’ve never forgotten. At a screening of Field of Dreams, I was one of several men who started crying. (To this day, I have never seen the actual end of that movie.) When my wife and I

went on our first date together, she showed me the great French comedy film

The Triplets of Belleville.

I laughed and laughed, and then realized she was sharing something very private and personal with me. We still view it together after all these years

and laugh anew.

Today, I still enjoy a film that has something to say — one that illustrates the way human happiness and pain is usually not found in big ideas, but in the little

victories and defeats; one that can teach me something. I know some people go to movies to escape, to be entertained or seduced for a couple of hours, and I think that’s fine. One

man’s Citizen Kane is another man’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Cinema, said the director Federico Fellini, uses the language of dreams.

So, like that 10-year-old

boy from so many years ago, movies still speak my language.