Film has the power to move us in profound ways, both positively and negatively—sometimes even in the same movie. I was reminded of that truism during an unexpected conversation with my mother last night.
I was talking on the phone with her when she mentioned that she and Dad had gone to see Steven Spielberg’s new drama War Horse the day before. That was pretty interesting in and of itself, as my parents go to the movies about as often as blue moons and leap years come around.
“So what did you think?” I asked. Mom spent the next 15 minutes telling me what she thought, because as it turns out, she couldn’t stop thinking about the movie. (She also gave me permission to share those thoughts here, by the way.)
On the most basic level, she appreciated how well crafted War Horse was—just as many mainstreams critics have been raving. It had “great values” and was very “uplifting,” she said. And she also noticed that the film mostly avoided graphic violence and gratuitous content like profanity and sensuality.
But that wasn’t why she was still thinking about it. Despite Spielberg’s un-Saving Private Ryan-like depiction of the horrors of war, my mother was still deeply affected by the images of suffering she had seen—in both positive and negative ways.
On the upside, she said the movie put some of her own struggles and concerns in perspective, specifically how much time we spend in America making sure that we’re comfortable . “I’m ashamed of my comfort and my preoccupation with it,” she admitted.
On the downside, she said she was still really struggling to process the images of suffering the film does depict—so much so that the film had left her in something of a depressive funk. “In theory, it’s a really good family film. But I’m 59, and I’m still struggling with it.” She went on to say that watching “one awful encounter with the horse after another was gut-wrenchingly emotional” and that there were moments that she had to shut her eyes because it was “one of the most difficult movies I’ve ever seen.”
Despite the movie’s positive themes about loyalty and sacrifice, she concluded, “I don’t think I would tell people to go see it, and I don’t think I would see it again.”
Now, I’m not writing this to warn you off of seeing War Horse. In fact, my mom even mentioned that not everyone will respond as she did, that many other viewers might not be as deeply affected as she was.
But listening to her talk about her visceral experience of this film, it was a reminder to me of why we do what we do here at Plugged In. The images we see in a movie theater can have a deep and lasting effect on us—both for good and for ill. And they’re worthy of our serious consideration.
If possible, it’s good to think through a film’s appropriateness ahead of time—which is what Plugged In is made to help you do. But sometimes even when we do our homework and have a pretty good idea of what to expect, we can still be surprised.
That happened with my mother, I think. My parents knew they were going to see a film about, well, war and a horse. Even so, the intensity of the movie’s images—and my mom’s reaction to them—caught her off guard.
When that happens, we’ve got a couple of choices. We can decide that we don’t want or need to see anymore, either shielding our eyes or simply leaving. And there’s no shame in the latter.
If we choose to stay, though, we may very well need to think and talk through what we’ve just witnessed, and explore why certain images, ideas or themes resonate so deeply—or disturbingly—with us.
Recent Comments