Dreams of Arcadia

Words. How do you come up with words to describe the horror of what happened at the midnight screen of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado?

To a cinephile, a darkened theater is special place; equal parts cathedral, magic show, and time machine. We go to the movies to escape from the harsh realities of every day life; the politics, the bigotry, and the partisanship that are making America less a beacon of light and more a cautionary tale.  We go to the cinema because we believe that somehow spending a few hours alone in the dark can restore our belief in the better part of our humanity; that by exploring the stories of lives vastly different from our own we can discover bridges between past and present, insights into culture and ideology, touchstones between people seking to live a life as best they know how.  We seek cinema as an expression of not only who we are but who we can be. Read the rest of this entry »