Podcast: Watching Movies in 3-D is Not for Me
I went to see the movie Gravity over the weekend—the one where Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are floating around in outer space. (You can keep reading—I’m not going to give away the plot.)
The version I saw was in 3-D, which means you don cheap ill-fitting glasses so that you can have the experience of being inside the movie as it happens. But the visual effect of something flying towards me is not what gives me the experience of being inside a movie.
I had the same problem watching The Life of Pi in 3-D. True, it was very scary when Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger, came flying at my face, but being frightened myself is not the same thing as identifying with the hero’s fright.
I don’t want anything to come between me and the characters in a story. Special effects are fun, but they are not what make you care about the hero’s quest in an adventure.
I watch most movies these days in order to escape into someone else’s life for an hour or two. I would like to forget I’m sitting in a movie theater or in a chair in my living room.
I want to cry for someone else’s pain, and thus help cleanse my own.
A friend talked to me recently about crying more easily these days. I have noticed the same thing in myself since Adrian died.
The other night I cried when the mother in a TV sitcom was diagnosed with cancer, while saying to myself, “This is fiction. The character has cancer, not the actor playing her.” That knowledge did not keep me from crying.
You probably learned in ninth grade science class that emotional tears have a different chemical makeup from the tears produced for lubrication or because of irritation. The emotional tears have a more soothing effect.
I always loved the line in Marlo Thomas and Friends’ Free to Be, You and Me album that told little boys, “It’s OK to cry.” I bought that album for my young daughter at the time, but it was really a gift to me.
It’s OK to cry.
And next time, don’t go to the 3-D version of a movie.
