How I Fell Back In Love With the Cinema

Several weeks ago I went to see The Reader with some friends one evening after class. I cried my eyes out; it was the hardest I've cried in recent memory, and I needed it. I can usually only cry like that at the cinema, and it's so cleansing, cathartic.

Film has always been my salvation. There wasn't a time since I was 12 that I wasn't writing a screenplay or filming shorts with my friends. I was always reading indie film blogs and watching movie after movie after movie... And then something changed over the past couple years. Finishing undergrad meant that I had to start thinking about careers and life and to try and be pragmatic about things. Film got lost in the mix. I began traveling voraciously, and reading and writing fit perfectly into that lifestyle. Film did not.

I'm the film editor for the LSE paper, but last term I probably only saw 3 or 4 movies total, none of which were any good. I've watched some really great films lately, and it's reawakened me to my connection with cinema. Film is where all of my passions intertwine: words and narrative, music, design, composition, romance, philosophy. I still don't know if I could ever convince myself to try and start a career in the film industry, but I'm thinking about it once again. I know I want to tell stories, but film has become such a daunting medium.

Last night I watched Rachel Getting Married, which reminded me so much of Festen (The Celebration), but was also good in its own unique ways. It made me yearn for those people who have know me my whole life, who know where I've come from, what I've been, the good and the bad. I miss having those people around in times of personal crises. I miss crying with them, deliberating with them, arguing, finding consensus, agreeing to disagree, agreeing to love each other despite. I've got a wedding coming up back in Canada over the summer which will catapult me back into the arms of those people. I'm really looking forward to being 'me' amongst people who have always known me. There's something about weddings that facilitate honesty and vulnerability. I suppose it's the blend of retrospection and nostalgia, coupled with new beginnings. And I suppose that's why weddings make such good movies!