Dreams versus Movies

As much as I enjoyed the new Indiana Jones movie, after I left the theatre I felt that the recent flying dream I experienced was more enrapturing than this movie was. In the dream, I was a full participant, whereas in the movie, I was a mere observer.

I don’t often attend the cinema and even have taken a mini-sabbatical from watching movies at home, although I have recently enjoyed watching an old Judy Garland movie and the 20^th anniversary edition of The Princess Bride.

I remember having an interesting discussion with one of my old publishers about movies. She asked if I often attended them and I said no; that to do so takes away from the imagination. She disagreed and said that they facilitate the imagination. I think that we are both right to a certain extent. How movies affect imagination is probably a complex formula, involving the quality of the movie, the personality and the mood of the person watching it, etc. And how do you measure that?

It should be noted that the publisher would hardly ever speak out against movies, since the Magic Lantern Theatre is one of the newspaper’s most loyal advertisers and has been since day one.