7-21-12 The Dark Night Rises

We went to see "The Dark Knight Rises" on Saturday morning. Since we are about 10 miles from Aurora, this was something we actually had to discuss. Bob had bought the tickets earlier in the week for the 10:30 show. Do we go? Do we trade them out and put it off? The news here, of course, is still filled with police press conferences and pictures of the victims now, finally, released. Those smiling faces that went in to the same movie and never came out. The rational side of you rolls its eyes at any apprehension you let bubble up. The emotional side wonders, are their other broken people out there who might be inspired to become copycats? Is it in bad taste to go?

At some point, though, you realize, the best thing you could do is to go. Not necessarily to this movie, unless that's your thing. But to go out and laugh and live and hope. The best thing yesterday was to catch the eye of other people in our theater and smile at them, despite the pall over the place. The IMAX screen is in Theater 13.

I am sure I was not the only one who looked differently at the emergency exits. People seemed to be much more attentive of one another as they came in to find seats. And I couldn't have been the only one who noted the AMC employee who took up position near the front right of the theater as the previews began. 

It was a Saturday morning at 10:30 on the premier weekend. The place should have been packed. 

It was half full.

But it was half full of people who had made a much more conscious decision not to be afraid. I never imagined attending a Batman movie would be a statement about not letting the bad guys have power over our lives, but that's what it felt like.

The people who were mercilessly gunned down inside the theater went there full of excitement. No one goes to a sold-out midnight premier half-heartedly, and if you do, the buzz of the packed audience is contagious. They went with family, boyfriends, girlfriends, children. They had sat like we did, watching previews with popcorn and sodas and whispering to one another. And as we did those things again, it was in some ways a tribute to them, to embracing life without fear.

The central motif of the film they never got to see, but that will forever be linked with their deaths is about rising from the pit, about how embracing fear and flying in the face of it is the only way up and out into the blazing light of freedom.

Let hope rise.