We're locked in, numb. We don't love enough. We don't risk enough. We don't fight for things.
That's where films come in. They paint our lives in all the colours we don't quite see.
We were better when we were kids. That's why we keep watching. We know It's in us.
Maguire. Brockovich. The Tramp. Gump. They're us. We see ourselves. We see our dreams.
Maguire took the risk. Brockovich fought the man. The tramp kept his curiosity, and Gump talked to strangers. They're the us we wanna be. The us we pretend to be.
We don't talk when we sit next to each other on a bench. We don't take the risk. And we don't fight the man and the injustice he perpetuates, we just write tweets about it.
Films show us the road to our better selves. They're all the parts we keep locked up in our broken hearts and resentful minds. The world fucked us over, again and again. Didn't get the job, didn't get the girl, didn't get to change the world.
Films are not unrealistic. They're not fantasies. They're more real than the bullshit that leaves us at home, all alone, complaining about everything the world did wrong.
Watch your favourite movie and then take that feeling, that essence, that thing that resonates with you and use it in your life.
This post reminds me of a quote from story guru, Robert McKee:
ReplyDelete“We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to vicariously inhabit another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart IS like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape life but to find life.”
I live by this quote. It's what made me decide to become a writer. But I've rarely heard anyone else reiterate this belief. Thank you for posting this and expressing this sentiment in your own words. Very well done.
You most certainly have a new reader.