I firmly believe everything you need to help you navigate life can be found in film.
Film is a religion. Film is a roadmap. Film is a psychiatrist. Film has lead untold lives, gathered untold experience, and provides us all with what it has learned.
Film can soothe your soul, challenge your perceptions, expose new pathways, and walk you through it all. It can brutalize you as well as heal you.
Anything that can manipulate one’s emotions in such a complete way has deep power over one.
Paris, Texas makes me cry every time I see it. The meeting between Travis and Jane resonates with emotional power. So much so that it does not matter that one knows it is coming. The film has perfectly captured that emotion and can disburse it every viewing.
Pretty in Pink, when Ducky is laying on Andie’s bed wrestling with his emotions, that nails how I felt at that age. It’s visceral to this day. Angst, longing, passion, confusion, joy, fear, all jumbled together.
I have studied The Exorcist thoroughly. I understand the backstory, the filmmaking process, read about the troubled production, the actors recalling their experiences, how the special effects work, how the soundtrack was developed. All the rational, intellectual knowledge I obtain does nothing to stop that film from scaring the crap out of me.
Film can help you cope. They can give you relief from reality. They can explain reality. They can inspire. They can soothe. They can educate. They can explore philosophy, religion, morality, and make you question what you believe.
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