Make Way For Tomorrow

I read the story 170 years after it was written, and it was so improbable and scientifically untrue, I couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t have flown with its original audience either. But why did I believe it?

Poe allowed himself a feeling of wonder—he wrote about that balloon trip because he wanted to know what it would be like and there was no account of it for him to read. There is a wealth of “stories to amaze” written in the nineteenth century. Jules Verne traded in them. And they all seem to be based on bad science.
But somehow this allows a more awe-inspiring world. In spite of the many great things a better understanding of science has done for us (including creating more and more situations for authors to “get it wrong” and make new and impossible scenes for us), it has killed all the best things in the world: superstition, shamanism, and wonder.

Wonder makes us human. The great gap between our species and all the other creatures on Earth is a consequence of our wondering at what laws govern the world. And we have created some wild laws in our history. Who remembers the one about throwing a dead cat over your shoulder in a graveyard at midnight to get rid of a wart?

So, I want to honor some of those artists who have kept a sense of awe alive in me. What follows are some of my favorite films or cinematic moments, all which have given me the most prized feeling I could have in a theater: wonder.

The greatest of all films about childhood, it is imbued with a childlike awe. It was Spielberg feeling loose between big films and he seemed to have channeled his own boyhood. He has a trademark on wonder: intense, blinding light; shooting stars. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind may actually fit more perfectly as a film about the great unknown, but there are few more favored images than the final shot of this film, with Elliott looking up at the sky, the setting sun casting an orange light on him: it is not the last time he’ll watch the skies. The end of the film is the image of the boy Spielberg looking up with awe and coming back with a story.

Here are some images: The children in an underground cave lit by luminous stones or in a deserted garden floating high above the earth in Laputa: Castle In The Sky. In My Neighbor Totoro, the little girl Mei finds a passage through thick shrubbery into a picturesque wood. She follows a trail until she reaches an enormous camphor tree, then falls into a hole at its trunk. She lands in a dreamlike den—on top of a giant, furry, owl-bear creature.

All of a sudden, the world was large again. I responded not only to the adventure, nor the action, nor the camaraderie. This is a film that excited me about Galapagos more than anything I have ever read or seen. There is such a feeling that the world is expansive and miraculous, and we are ever ready to dive into danger for the understanding of it. I have praised this film for as long as I have known it; it is one of the greats.
Have you had a similar experience from a film? Tell about it in the comments.
Comments
off the subject though... The pretige was amazing. i never thought i would enjoy a magic story so much.
we watched The Host today. it was an amazingly original film.
children of men is one of the most realistic apocalyptic stories of all time. watching the film is so tiring because it is so enthralling.
woody is also successfully turning me into a justice league fan that doesnt read. I love the tv show and the batman animated show. we just might have batman and woderwoman on top of the wedding cake :)