Movies taking us away from the mundane: that is the little miracle I keep returning for. Aren’t you tired of the ordinary? Doesn’t it bother you to find yourself surrounded by things that seem powerless and futile? Following the same old jaded acts can make everything feel pointless. Sometimes, all I want is something different to happen.
Something unworldly, unearthly, that shatters conventions and uproots beliefs. Something that pushes me to the edge, keeps the adrenaline pumping and takes the ordinary out of life for a while. Luckily for us, we have movies to bring that change.
Movies Taking Us Away From the Mundane
Movies are the exquisite stuffing we reach for when life feels hollow. Some send us into fits of fantasy, an incessant joyride into the unknown. They open a realm where we wish to live forever, a world that seems to promise a better life than ours.
Of course, that promise belongs to the screen. The rent, the unfinished work and the unanswered message will still be there afterwards. But for those two hours, attention can move somewhere else. A familiar room falls away, and a world made of light starts feeling close enough to touch.
Living a Protagonist’s Life
Many films let us live a protagonist’s life. We turn heroes all of a sudden. We connect with the person who does right and support the do-gooder silently. Then a plot lets us marvel at that character’s amazing life. We become projected personas. We get under their skin and live, if only for a few hours.
Yet it is not always the hero we recognise. Sometimes it is the person standing quietly at the edge of a scene. A hesitation, a look or a sentence can feel more familiar than any grand adventure. That is where escape starts becoming a form of recognition.
When Someone Else’s Story Feels Like Ours
The right kind of drama connects with the soul. It feels as if our own stories are on display. We empathise with every tear that finds no cheek. We understand the pain, fathom the predicament and feel the love. Our hearts heave with rapture. We smile, frown and drown ourselves in projected stories that may never have happened.
Fiction dreamt up by other heads, and yet we live it. For those fleeting hours, we witness someone else’s life mould and carve magic right in front of our eyes. The experience need not be pleasant to be valuable. A difficult film can leave me grateful for what I have, or unsettled by something I had stopped noticing.
I can’t imagine a life without movies. They give us a way to lead a thousand lives. Nothing catches that longing better for me than Ron’s words:
Man, I got one..one life right? Mine. But fuck I want somebody else’s sometimes.
Ron · Dallas Buyers Club
Movies Taking Us Away, Then Bringing Us Back
Then the end credits show up. The lights take us back to stark reality. The same old life reappears like a tattered page, dusty and hard to read. That return can feel abrupt, especially when the film has given us somewhere we did not want to leave.
Still, I do not think the visit has to end at the exit. A scene can stay with us on the journey home. It can change the way we look at someone, or give a shape to a feeling we could not name. That is also why I keep thinking about the Pensieve and the temptation to revisit memory: a screen, like an imagined memory bowl, lets us look at a life from a different distance.
A Small Note About 1895
The original title placed this escape “since 1895.” The Lumière brothers’ Paris screening on 28 December 1895 remains a famous landmark, but cinema did not begin with a single invention on a single evening. The BFI’s account of cinema’s early pioneers explains the overlapping experiments and earlier shows behind that familiar date.
For me, the enduring wonder is less tidy than a starting date. Watching a movie lets off steam. It offers another world for a while, away from our own grief or weariness. It fills a void with frames that defy the ordinary. Then, if we are lucky, it sends us back to our one life with something worth carrying. That is the release I keep finding in movies.
