San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘Mulan’ made me realize I miss bigstudio movies.
Usually at this time of year, I go on vacation for about a month, and most years it takes about three weeks for the thought to finally cross my mind: “Hey, I’m in the mood to see a movie.”
I like when that happens, because each time I know that in very short order I’ll be back at work and seeing lots of movies. So it’s much more convenient, from a mental health standpoint, if I actually want to do that.
At the same time, I’m always glad that it takes a full three weeks for this impulse to reassert itself, because — again, from a mental health standpoint — I don’t want to be one of those weird guys. Movies are a nice aspect in life, but they aren’t life, and they aren’t the only nice thing.
I should also say that when I’m missing the movies, what I’m usually missing are the movies I’d normally be watching at home, not the brandnew, big studio releases. In my work life, I get a steady diet of those — lots of good and lots of bad, and everything in between.
But the other day, I was watching “Mulan,” and I realized that I was really, seriously enjoying it. And not just enjoying it as I normally would, as an exceptionally good movie. No, I was also enjoying it generically. I was getting into the experience of a humongous, expensive, major studio blockbuster. It made me look back on all the other movies I’ve been reviewing since the pandemic began, which were smaller movies, some of which I genuinely liked. But now, next to “Mulan,” they suddenly seemed like low fat compared to whole milk. That’s totally fine, and on most occasions I might even like the low fat better, but there are times — like maybe you’re eating a chocolate cake or one of those big brownies the size of a hockey puck — when only whole milk is going to do it.
When this pandemic period started, I would notice changes within myself or other people and think, “Oh,
OK, this is how it’s going to be.” It didn’t occur to me that, within the pandemic period itself, various aspects would shift and change. Attitudes and moods would start out one way and become something else. Yet we know from history that this is usually the case.
From the distance of time, for example, we might think of the London blitz as all one thing. Y’know, everyone was scared; Churchill made a speech, and then everything was better. But, in fact, morale fluctuated throughout.
Our morale fluctuates, too. One of the weirdest things about living at a social distance from each other is that sometimes it’s easy and it sometimes isn’t. One day you can feel unshackled from normal life, free and unbounded, and the next day you can feel trapped and frustrated. And yet, aside from how you felt about them, the days might be completely identical.
So we’re finding out things about ourselves, about how we live and think and how our preferences can change. Some of these realizations may end up becoming important, and some will always be trivial. But discoveries are discoveries. Like, hey, I just found out that I like blockbusters. True, it took me six months to miss them, as opposed to the three weeks it usually takes for me to miss regular movies, but still, I like them, and I’m glad to know it.
Is that trivial? Under normal circumstances, yes. However, if you’re like me, and you go to at least two dozen blockbusters every year, more or less under compulsion, finding out you like them is a mediumsize deal. Not a big deal, but unquestionably a deal of some dimension.
That’s why, the first chance I get — that is, the first unworried chance, the first hugebucketofpopcorn chance — I’m seeing “Mulan” on a huge screen.
Why not? It really is good enough to see twice.