There is something wonderfully nostalgic about a dark movie theater. The message that awaits you is always different. The popcorn could be less buttery with a layer of staleness. The shared atmosphere either interrupted with laughter, silenced with sniffles or cut by phone pings from the movie patron that lives above the laws of AMC. 

You impossibly find community in the darkness, a shared journey with your neighbor even when you are not consciously aware of them. Sitting in theater 8 you are transported continents and centuries away when you watch The Odyssey, somehow feeling no association to when you were in that same theater months before, being immersed in the tragedies of Hamnet. For two or three hours the mind observes outside of the body, entirely untethered. 

The body is known to keep the score, and yet the memories of one movie do not blend into the next. The theater affords a certain degree of amnesia that is typically not possible in a location that you spend several hours in. Barbie did not affect the viewership of Oppenheimer, even if they were watched back to back.

This can only be described as teleporting. The power of a director and a troop of actors to bring you outside of your squeaking, pre-loved assigned seat. The power of the film to influence your walk or drive home, your conversations at work the following day and your Letterboxd review. The power of an experience that could easily feel monotonous and overdone, but is always wonderfully singular and unique from the next. 

How many tragedies, homecomings and happy endings have we witnessed? And still the theater will reset. Still it will be a dark room filled with strangers and a large rectangle the next time it is entered and each time after that. It’s a connection that is made for the stories where the vessel is completely ignored.

Growing up my mom used to take me and my siblings to the movies a lot. When the credits rolled, the second show would begin. My siblings and any cousin or friend that tagged along and I would bound down the steps to the front of the theater, assume our positions and dance and jump until the credit music ended. Using the movie monitor flash as our spotlight, we had 10 blissful minutes of fame. We were in the movie! Because, look! There were our shadows on the screen!

Still, the dance differed every time. You could expect kicking and chopping in the performance for Karate Kid, but slow and exaggerated ballroom dancing for Frozen. These distinctions are made for each movie with no regard or memory of the last, we were too caught up in the present. Maybe this is just what it means to be inspired.

Movie theaters are nostalgic and yet faceless all the same.