How Film Directed my Life

Growing up I never really enjoyed reading. Mainly, because of my dyslexia and the pure fact that it was forced down my throat almost every day of my early school career. I never realized I was different until the fifth-grade year. My class and I went to the library to pick out books. Everyone was getting the classic fifth-grader book like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Peter Jackson, and Harry Potter. Harry Potter was the one that made it click. It was the last pin to the lock that I’ve kept locked my whole life! I wanted to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The book was huge. I was dumbfounded at the pure size of this book that everyone was reading. As I read the first chapter, I found myself annoyed. I haven’t made any progress I thought. The book was a marathon and I was racing on my hands and knees. I couldn’t understand how my fellow classmates could read this in a week! I never finished Harry Potter that year. That night I went home and lost it. It’s a frustrating feeling for a fifth grader to realize that are different than the other students. My parents when on and explained to my condition and how I’ve actually made great progress, I just was not there quite yet. 

The problem was I like stories and like every kid, I had an overactive imagination.  This combined with a film titled Jurassic Park would start a passion that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I saw Jurassic Park when I was 13-years-old and it amazed me! Up to this point, I’ve only seen lackluster kids movies and the few quality films I’ve seen went over my head. The T-Rex fence scene was the scene that truly amazed me. The pure scale that it had was incredible. I was so fascinated by this film I started researching about it! I read articles upon articles about how the film was made and the director Steven Spielberg. For the first time, I was reading something I was interested in. From this experience, I would watch more and more movies. After school on Fridays, my father would take me to our local Blockbusters were I could pick out a movie. This was always the highlight of my week. I would scan the shelves like a hawk looking for a new movie to watch. I watch a lot of Steven Spielberg films. He was a favorite director at the time. Of course, this is because he is really the only director I’ve seen. 

 I started running into some problems with being able to watch certain films. My parents cared about my mental health and wouldn’t want me to watch a traumatizing rated R Thriller. Films like Ripley Scott’s Alien and Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs were considered off-limits. I’ve read so much about these movies from websites like rotten tomatoes and different Reddit forms I felt like I had to watch them, but I didn’t for a long time. This changed once I overheard a conversation at school about a film called Seven. A thriller that follows the events of a killer that is inspired by the seven deadly sins, I was absolutely fascinated. That night I brought it up to my parents, asking them if they ever have seen the movie. They both praised the movie, went on about how great it is and how fantastic the ending was. That was immediately followed by “No you cannot watch it!”. I’m not a parent but I know that that is not the thing you want to tell a curious movie-loving young teen. I decided I was going to see this movie regardless. In the following weeks, I would stay up late and scour across different TV channels to see if this elusive movie was being played. I eventually watched Seven. It played very late at night on AMC and it was an amazing experience. This was my second “Jurassic Park” moment. I remember being fully immersed in this film and it scared me to death. This was the first film where I really appreciated the direction and the overall plot of a film. I’m not going to spoil the ending of seven but it was something truly remarkable. I now viewed movies completely differently. We’re before I saw them as a really fun and exciting experience I now saw them as pure art.  I love movies, they are a huge part of my life and they’ve definitely played a part shaping me into the person I am today. Sadly, I feel like this art form is being forgotten in favor of lesser forms of media. Even if films die one day, I will always remember the impact that they’ve had on me and my perception of art.