It was just like in the movies!

Needless to say, it has been a busy, and interesting week. I hope you all got some things done having had last week off from class unexpectedly. God knows I didn't. Let's just say when someone is negligent, runs a red light and broadsides you in a vehicle, no one is standing by waiting to make the hellish process that you were unwillingly thrown into any easier or more pleasant. Not to get into the personal details of my life, but I have been thinking during this process of dealing with my wife's accident how much of life we relate through the experience of movies. 

How many times do we have something dramatic, like a car accident happen to us and without having the words to effectively describe it, we say "it was just like in the movies"? What better way to capture that moment than to relate our experience with something so familiar as what we all have viewed on a movie screen. Immediately, we know exactly what is being described. It all happens so fast in the reality of our lives, we don't even have the time to take it all in. It's almost as if the film versions of our lives give meaning to the reality and allow us to process what is otherwise unknowable. 

At the same time, watching something on a television screen or on a computer or in a movie theater can never compare to the real thing. Working at a TV station, I have shot probably hundreds of accident scenes, many of them fatal. I have seen hundreds if not thousands more on TV. I've watched You Tube videos from security cameras that have captured that actual accident, and of course have seen it dramatized countless times in films. But those experiences pale in comparison to witnessing one. I actually had this experience walking out of the Dryden Theater last year. A car had pulled out in front of a motorcyclist, and with no time to react, the motorcycle struck the car and the driver was thrown from his bike. I heard the screech of tires and crash while looking down to unlock the door to my car parked probably 20 feet away, and  looked up in time to see the guy hit the ground and witness the commotion that followed. Fortunately, the guy suffered only minor injuries, but it got my heart pumping, and I'm used to being around this sort of thing. Come to think of it, it was just like in the movies.

Speaking of movies, I did manage to catch a pretty good flick called The Visitor just the other day. It was a really poignant film that dealt with this whole debacle that our immigration system is, but not in the typical straightforward way you might expect. It began as story about a middle-aged white college professor whose wife has died and children have grown up and moved out of his posh Connecticut home. His conservative lifestyle of teaching and lecturing and writing scholarly books and papers bores him. A trip to his apartment in New York for a week-long conference brings about a series of events that changes his life. When he arrives, a couple is staying there, having sublet the place, unbeknownst to him, and he walks in on them, the woman in the bath, the man angrily accosting him. And in that heated moment of misunderstanding, he pleads "I have keys! I have keys! This is my apartment!" in the threatening face of this stranger with clenched fists. It's another one of those rare moments of panic that many of us will encounter at some point in our lives, but we can only relate by saying, it was just like in the movies!

Ultimately, the man allows the couple to stay while they figure out what to do next. Without spoiling the rest of the story, they become involved in one another's lives in a way that is fulfills this character's life more than the money and prestige that teaching or writing books has brought him. He becomes so engaged in the struggle that results from their immigration status that he goes to great lengths to help them, though there is no way for them to repay him. But we see through his own transformation that he is paid back richly by knowing that he can at least try to help right an injustice. The approach could not have been simpler and more straightforward as far as the way that it was shot and edited. The camera generally was very static, allowing the interactions of the characters to drive the story. Nothing spectacular happened within the film. There were no elaborate CG effects, costumes, makeup or even a lot of added music. It was a very ordinary sort of story, but with an extraordinary message. Watching a film like this is evidence enough that if you have a great story, you don't need to be flashy in your approach to make it transcend the typical fare. The realness of the characters and their interactions make it work. And of course, sometimes just as art imitates life, we relate to art because of what we have experienced in our own lives.