It was the glasses, or so I thought. How otherwise could the five dollar movie ticket increase be justified on top of what are ordinarily expensive prices? But we all put them on once we sat down, and as the lights dimmed and the 3D trailer came on, there we were, an audience of Buddy Holly lookalikes with the action flashing in our lenses.
We watched Up in 3D and I was blubbering by the fifteen minute mark. I can’t help it. I don’t know why. Perhaps my emotional sensitivity is no better than a child’s; or perhaps it’s worse, as I don’t recall hearing anyone else crying as the movie progressed.
Well, anyone else except Keira.
Proving again she is of my loins, I knew at about the three-quarter point that something was wrong. First came the fidgets. Then she turned to me and her lips were wobbling underneath the comical glasses.
“Mum, I don’t like this. I want to go. This is scary.”
My efforts to (quietly) assure her that it would soon be over, don’t worry the baddie won’t win, made her distress greater and the only thing that stopped her walking out was my nursing her so she could nuzzle her head under my arm.
For the record, I enjoyed Up. I thought it was an imaginative look at those old themes of never giving up your dreams, that you’re never too old to change or try. However Keira had a limit of how many shots she could tolerate of characters dangling precariously over vast canyons, and now she’s old enough to know that if that were to happen in real life, the outcome would be very different, the chances of a lucky escape slim. She also didn’t like the grouchiness of Carl (the main character, modelled after the actor Spencer Tracey, I swear to God) who turned on those around him in anger when it looked like his dream wasn’t going to eventuate. Perhaps she didn’t like how even heroes are fallible, aren’t perfect.
I wonder if the root problem is this: that like me she embraces the story too much and finds it difficult to maintain a spectator’s distance. Her investment in an extended narrative like a movie is all or nothing. So at the end, as I began crying again, she sat and patted my arm sympathetically.
We comrades in tears, keepers of the tale
dutiful participants in journeys unknown –
whatever the outcome, whatever the price
