Photo/Illutration Movie fans check out posters in front of a cinema in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on June 1. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

When film director Kiyoshi Kurosawa was a senior high school student, he used to run to the movie theater as soon as school let out, itching to "take refuge" there.

Once he was inside, "a movie greeted me with a bang," as he put it, letting him forget all his teenage angst, such as his feelings of insecurity and inferiority.

Kurosawa is one of the people in the movie business whose thoughts about motion pictures were quoted and compiled in "Soshite Eigakan wa Tsuzuku" (And so the cinema goes on), a book published last autumn.

A movie house is one's nearest portal to "another universe." That's probably why people go there, even in this age with a plentiful selection of films available for online viewing.

Cinemas that were forced into temporary closure by the COVID-19 pandemic began reopening this month in Tokyo and Osaka.

"The screen doesn't spew droplets," actress Sayuri Yoshinaga reportedly quipped in her greetings from the stage.

She is right. Nothing flies out of the screen, but our hearts fly to it if the movie is a masterpiece.

"The Father," a 2020 drama film that is now playing at theaters, was one of those works that transported me to an unknown world.

The protagonist is an elderly man with dementia, and the scenes we are shown are exactly how he sees them.

His inability to distinguish his own daughter from his caregiver was unsettling and kept me on edge.

But by the time the film was nearing the end, I found myself empathizing with his senility.

Be it a cinema or an art museum, I never even imagined these things could disappear one day from our daily lives. And this reminded me that culture could be more fragile than we think, and that's why it is so precious.

The book I mentioned above also quotes the deputy manager of a movie theater as saying that the pandemic "made me realize that when all is said and done, the cinema is where strangers come together to share their time."

Oddly enough, I do feel relieved when I am among people watching the same film together, even though we wouldn't be talking to one another.

--The Asahi Shimbun, June 4

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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