Tim Goldsmith

When I logged into my web application thingy, I had no idea what I wanted to write about?

I had been thinking about blogging on “Up in the Air” which I enjoyed a great deal (not surprising, since it was created by the same man who did two other favourites, “Thank you for Smoking” and “Juno”). There’s lots of great themes in the movie: the nature of relationships, our reason for being, the question of what is happiness & can it ever exist consistently?

Instead I decided I wanted to ask a question.

This is possibly a very stupid idea, given that my readership is maybe 5ish…

My question, for all 5 of you is “Why do you go and see movies? To turn your brain on or to turn it off?”

I know a number of people who only want to go to movies if they can guarantee at least one explosion every 10 minutes. They need action, adventure & possibly some gratuitous violence.

I on the other hand love a movie that causes me to think. I want to know what I would do in any given situation, or whether or not I agree with the philosophical presuppositions that the main character holds. Is their moral viewpoint logically consistent? Even better, does some activity in the movie cause me to ask whether I am morally or ethically consistent?

Even something like Avatar has levels to consider. Are we a culture that is getting caught up in nature worship? Is a technological societie’s ability to dominate a weaker (if more ecologically friendly) society just reflect the same kind of relationship we see in nature between, say, the Lion and its prey?

Even when a movie doesn’t ask a deep moral question, I still prefer the “Brain turned on” movies. Something that is dialogue driven, that keeps you thinking, that distorts one’s perception of time or space… It’s nice to inhabit a reality that is profoundly not mine, yet stretches my understanding of my own reality.

What gets you going in a good movie?