IS WATCHING MOVIE A WASTE OF TIME?

This has entered the lexicons of popular sayings imposed on the youth by elders.

Extend this logic to life itself. What really happens in life? You’re born, you grow, you go through some events, and finally, at the end of it all, what happens? You die.

That’s right, you’re gone in one moment. All your memories are erased. Of course, depending upon the religion under consideration, all sorts of things are said to happen to your soul once you die. But science establishes that nothing really happens after you die. You’re dormant. Gone. Without any memories of the events, you went through whatsoever.

If this really is the outcome of life, then why live it. Why go through the daily ordeals and strive for the fruits of hard work only to end up having to forget them? Why make an effort to live at all when death is the inevitable outcome?

That’s because there’s something called an experience. We don’t really live for the outcome of life; we live for the experiences that life gives us along the way. And even though we may eventually forget them, the fact that these experiences did give us joy at some point cannot be taken away.

Likewise, watching movies is an experience. You go through several things when watching a movie - excitement, fear, sadness, goosebumps or even boredom. Watching movies can spark your interest in certain things and help you come up with ideas which you can use to change your life. In it’s own small way, every movie you watch, good or bad, is an experience you create for yourself. Some of these experiences are momentary; others can very well shape aspects of your life by teaching you lessons in a simpler way or educating you about aspects of history you weren’t even born to witness.

Apart from all that narrative though, there are many reasons why watching movies is not a waste of time. There are, in fact, entire books that support this idea. The most compelling reason we at Trada theater equip have found is this:

movies can capture things that we cannot see with our own eyes. They allow us entirely new ways of seeing the world, giving us a vantage point that we wouldn’t otherwise possess. It has the ability to engender us with profound empathy and understanding for people whose lives are wildly different from our own. It gives us a way of living vicariously through the eyes of the camera.

You get to live all sorts of stories and experience things you may never have the opportunity to even encounter. You live the life of a black man struggling to find his place in society while raising up a son by himself, dealing with unemployment, poverty, and debts simultaneously.

You live the life of a gay mathematician with a bunch of geniuses saving 14 million people in WWII, with a tragic end to the remarkable yet anonymous life he has led. You learn about the Nazis and how a single man himself has saved hundreds of thousands of Jews and yet still blaming himself for not doing more.

You see life through the eye of a dog owner and perhaps find your own self in it (if you have a pet). 

You are a guy who just simply leaves every thing behind to roam the world regardless of the consequences, and hell it has really been true bliss. You live and cry and laugh and think and sympathize and a plethora of other feelings awaiting.

And then you get to see these amazing people telling stories in their own way, through their eyes, their facades, their gestures, through silence, or through a piece of music, a small act of objection that sparks a rebellion, the exchange of eyes from which love flourishes. The process of making a movie itself is purely breath-taking and infinitely grand. Such a large amount of time and effort in itself is a charm.

So is watching movies a waste of time? You tell us.