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Manohla Dargis | AO Scott
Manohla Dargis
I watched until my eyes blushed
It has been a year of obsessively but indiscriminate viewing, a year of small and small screens. On a wasted day not long ago, I spent 11 horrible (embarrassing!) Hours and 15 minutes on my phone. I read the news, scrolled Twitter, did riddles, checked my emails, and kept scrolling. It’s no wonder my eyes regularly start to ache and itch at times, making me worried about needing a new prescription for my glasses. I didn’t, I just needed to stop looking, but I couldn’t put my phone down which tied me to the bigger world which I missed dearly.
The purpose of a top 10 list is to share our favorite movies. But thinking about my favorites of the year and all the many old and new titles that I’ve seen, I also thought a lot about how I watched movies and, well, just looked. Founder of the big screen, I love going to the cinema, in first and second diffusion cinemas as well as in art houses, museums and film libraries. I know which theater and studio in Los Angeles (where I live) has the biggest screen, best sound, best sight lines, and best seats – I like to sit in the middle of the theater, perfectly centered .
When theaters closed in Los Angeles in March, I cried. (They’re still closed.) Critics’ tears are tiny, but cine is who I am. I grew up in New York City in the 1970s watching as many movies as possible, including on television. But going to the movies was one of my first adventures in sovereignty, one of the first ways I experienced ordinary life without parental supervision. Making cinema was my thing, a way of seeing and being. Until March, this also played a decisive role in my understanding of time, its shape, texture and demands: the cinema dictated what I did day and night, including the many hours I spent in it. car to go and return screenings.
Like many people, I have felt unhitched this year in part because of the way I am now experiencing the weather. I worked from home for a long time, but to watch films again, I go to the cinema. So I found it difficult to learn how to watch the movies I was reviewing at home, how to respect the concentration they needed and deserved, how to sit – and stay seated – on the couch and not. Don’t press the pause button, don’t check Twitter. It didn’t help that we have a lot of windows, which made it impossible to reproduce a dark projection room, even with the nuances drawn. So to keep it classy, I hung sheets on the blinds and even taped Trader Joe’s shopping bags to a small window, which was as ridiculous as it sounds.
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