I saw Smilla’s Sense of Snow twice in one week because it made me feel cold. I was studying in Cape Town, South Africa. Around the university, or in the home of the family hosting me, the smells were all new – Rooiboos tea, curried chicken, unfamiliar cleaning sprays. Each morning I rode the train to school, home again in the afternoon. I was always sweaty, often homesick. Every hour was hot and dry. Email was only accessed from internet cafes, and there wasn’t much to read anyway. Days passed slowly. I was twenty years old, a young twenty, and I thought I knew why I was there, but I didn’t. I also thought I knew who I was. Is it possible that I had so much more growing to do, or worse, that I had barely begun?
Going to the movies alone is like diving in the ocean. When the lights finally drop, you slip under the surface, into darkness, alone with your thoughts; you’re unwatched but not alone, which are probably my ideal circumstances. For Sense of Snow, I went to a pair of matinees in a suburban shopping mall. I rode the escalator to the second floor. Only a few people were in the theater. I’ve always been a cold weather person – I seem to run abnormally hot – and nearly every scene was full of snow, snow as backdrop, snow as crime scene, snow as terrain of human connection. The movie ends with a camera slowly flying over icebergs. Both times I sat contentedly as the credits rolled. I felt at home in myself, if that makes any sense, or, maybe I didn’t know much about myself yet, but I sensed I was the kind of person who liked going to movies alone.
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