The Iron Giant

This world we woke up in almost exactly a year ago has hints of normal in it now. Yesterday, we rented a movie theater with neighbor friends we have interacted with on a consistent basis since the pandemic began. It was fifty dollars a family and we sat in the dark of the mostly-empty theater, snacked on popcorn, and watched "The Iron Giant" from 1999 like it was the best film we had ever seen. And it may very well have been the best film I have ever seen given that it was the first theater experience I've had in over a year. The darkness, the dimming of the lights right at show time, the too-salty popcorn, and then only the thrum of my heart against my chest as my life and the outside world were forced into submission by the narrative and the music and the imagination of the filmmakers made it feel entirely novel and fresh and new. I think, as we redefine normal, there will be a lot of things that feel like new-first-times (good news: we can ALLLLL be virgins of all sorts again!).

And there was, of course, the outcries from the children. At one point, the little boy of our friends stood up in his seat and said, "I LOVE this movie!"

It is a nod to our lives as they were before this happened. We have said goodbye to a thousand simple sweetnesses, a thousand of the graces we once considered common, haven't we? The liberty of sitting in a darkened theater, surrounded by strangers, and vowing to go on a narrative journey together is one of the things I have most missed.

The grace and beauty of the artists amongst us is that they allow us time to pause and reflect and escape. Their role is to hold up a mirror so that we can see the best and worst of ourselves. And they allow us an escape from the monotony of our world. The best art allows us to live a thousand times, to journey entirely into someone else's life and return to ourselves in the end, slightly altered (usually in ways so subtle that they are unnoticeable, but the seeds of doubt or hope or a new perspective or curiosity have been planted and the roots start to creep, creep, creep toward the heart where they leave an indelible imprint).

I think novels provide a similar escape and I have continued to devour books in the pandemic. But what is a bit more difficult with reading is that it is a solitary pursuit and not communal escapism. The movies, when done masterfully, allow an entire group of humans to gasp and sigh and cry in unison, to fall in love, to battle, to be captured, and to be enchanted as though they are all a part of some uniform organism. And in the end, the stranger in the seat beside you is just a little less separate and the journey has been undertaken as a community of individuals who were all drawn to the same tale.

After the last year, I think most of us could use a lot less solitary and a lot more communal. And so yesterday felt like a breath of normalcy and a small step toward a world where art can be devoured together, where we can all reckon in a visceral way with our humanity, with its beauty and complexity and imperfection. I have missed weeping openly, leaping out of my seat at an intentional startle, and sighing with relief at the end of a climax with a human being who begins the night a stranger but who ends it as someone with whom I have undertaken a journey. 

I have missed the humanity of the other. But more than that I have missed the institutions and the art-forms that reminds us that, in fact, there is no other. There is only you and me and the distance between the two of us turns out to be of no great significance whatsoever.