What The Movies Do

Early this January I attended a weekday early evening showing of "True Grit" downtown at the AMC East and as I often like to sit much closer to the screen then most other patrons I was fortunate enough to have no one in front of me and only one couple off to my right who were quiet and well behaved throughout. Golden! Except, uh, not quite. Just as the movie was starting two couples entered and, sure enough, sauntered into the row directly in front of me. Then they stood there, debating where to sit, before finally one couple sat down all the way to the right and one couple sat down all the way to the left. Huh? Didn't really matter. It would've been fine....except time after time the two women would scurry to the center of the row, converse about who-knows-what and then scurry back to their seats. This must have happened 9 or 12 times. What the hell is going on?! Why aren't they sitting together?! Do their husbands not like each other?! What do they keep discussing?! Why does she keep checking her Iphone?! WHY ARE THEY HERE?! WHY ARE-

But then, suddenly, magically, there was this moment when Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and Laboeuf (Matt Damon) have crossed this river and they've left Mattie (Hallee Steinfeld) on the other side because, you know, come on, she's a 14 year old girl. No way she's fording this river. No way. It's best if she just goes on home. But then, by God, she fords that river and this music plays and my heart surged and my lips unwittingly twisted into a giant smile and those people in front of me......wait, what people in front of me? There are people in front of me? Nope. Not anymore. Heck, I'm not even in a movie theater. To paraphrase Lykke Li: I'm Good, I'm Gone.

Theoretically movies are about a lot of things. They are about writing and acting and directing and lighting and the soundtrack and production design and sound mixing and marketing campaigns and profit points and opening weekend box office and all this and all that but, really, truly, deep down there in places that sometimes we talk about at parties, they are about all those things coalescing into one thing and one thing only: getting good and gone.