I got a call last week from a friend asking if I wanted to go to the movies. The movies! What a concept, I thought. Our local multiplex theaters have all closed. The only theater left is called the Jacob Burns Film Center and it is a gem. It is a five-screen, nonprofit, cultural arts center and we are so lucky to have it. Because of its closing during Covid and my forgetting to go out to see a movie, I hadn’t been there for more than two years.
So, the idea of joining two friends for a movie and dinner was delightful. The fact that it was a night of torrential rain didn’t damage the evening at all.
The movie we went to see was called The Outfit. The film’s synopsis is as follows:
“From the Academy Award-winning writer of The Imitation Game (Graham Moore) comes The Outfit, a gripping and masterful thriller in which an expert tailor (Academy Award-winner Mark Rylance) must outwit a dangerous group of mobsters in order to survive a fateful night.”[1]
The story develops on different levels that you can only discern as the movie progresses. It starts with the tailor explaining the art of cutting and sewing a suit to fit his client perfectly. The only way that happens is if he understands the person he is dressing completely. That ability is at the crux of the story and allows for the denouement to be far more intricate than first thought and that is what makes the movie one I highly recommend. The juxtaposition of the tailor's craft as a cutter versus the crudeness of the mobsters that invade his space is like a complex dance where you don’t know who plays the lead role until the end.
Afterwards, we found a table at a local restaurant, where we sat down for a relaxed dinner, good conversation, and a bottle of wine. Going out to dinner and a movie with friends seemed so novel and yet before the pandemic it was a regular activity.
It became so easy and comfortable to stay home and stream a movie, but there is something incomparable about being enveloped in a dark theater to do nothing other than experience a story. One, that on that large screen, becomes bigger than life and takes you so completely into its own world that you have no other focus.
I’m glad I rediscovered it.
How about you, have you gone back to the movies yet?
Are you still anxious about Covid? I can tell you that the theater wasn't crowded so there was lots of room to stay distanced, if that helps.
[1] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_outfit_2022
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