The Power of a Film

I've been told that as a young child I was extremely sensitive to movies. Even as a preteen I would get really upset at any violence or if an animal even got hurt in a film. Then as I grew older I think I came to understand that while the emotions invoked by art are real, the stories are just that; stories. Film lost the power to universally invoke the pits or heights of emotion that it previously had.

I'm still extremely moved, however, by stories that are real. This week it is 'The Lady,' a movie that came out last summer about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The story is at once moving, tragic, beautiful, and true. It's not history, but current in the unchanged situation in Burma. 

I think that good art encourages us to see the emotions and complexities of life in the extreme. We feel pain, or love, or whatever it is, in the Platonic ideal of what that emotion can be. Art is a beautiful and powerful way to express life.