In addition to taking trips down memory lane by way of song this week, I've also been watching old movies. I thought we would have movie afternoons, but afternoons have been full of naps. So watching movies in the evening has been a great way of turning our attention away from the national news and getting ourselves settled.
I wanted to choose movies that we've all seen before. I thought it might help to have something that's not challenging us to keep track of new characters and different plotlines. On Saturday, we watched Hannah and Her Sisters, which I saw with Mom and Dad in a movie theatre when it was first released in 1986. Dad came home from a business trip where he had seen it and loved it so much that he wanted to watch it again. So we did.
They had no memory of ever seeing it, but they were open to it. They laughed at all the funny parts. We all stayed awake through the whole movie--no small thing. I tried not to think of revelations about the more sordid side of Woody Allen that were to come, a reason I can't watch Manhattan again. There were a few lines that made me wince, but overall, it holds up well.
Mom said she didn't understand it, and Dad said it was a great movie.
Last night, we watched Apollo 13. After the death of Jim Lovell this week, it seemed fitting. Plus I figured the plot line would be easy to follow: doomed spaceship and astronauts trying to get home. I was right--we were rivetted.
In the past, I've written an extensive blog post about my sadness thinking about the space programs of the past and wondering why we let all of that slip away. Last night as we watched the credits, I felt a similar sadness about great movie making of the past. I saw Apollo 13 in a movie theatre when it was first released. It has been a long time since I saw a movie in a movie theatre, and even longer since I saw a movie trailer and thought that I needed to see it on a big screen, not a small one.
Most movies these days don't seem like they're worth the time or the money or the effort. I know it's because I'm not the target audience for many of them--if I liked big budget super hero movies, I'd be writing a blog post about how we're in a golden age.
I look at our movie landscape in 2025, and I don't see big budget movies that will make multiple generations happy. There's very little being released today that I can conceive of seeing with both my parents and my nephew--or even with my spouse. Sigh.
But let me not lose myself to sadness today. Let me be happy that we could stream this movie in ways we could not 30 years ago--and for the same price that a video rental cost in 1995--about $3.00. Let me be happy that we could sit on a sofa and watch a great piece of filmmaking together.
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