The Dark Knight Rises

I went to see The Dark Knight Rises yesterday.  It was tougher than I expected.

We saw it at Battery Park, which is alongside the financial district, where most of the action in the movie takes place, which makes things jump off the screen a bit more.  It's also right next door to ground zero, which makes seeing films with killing or large-scale destruction harder to swallow.


But of course, in light of the Colorado shooting, it was impossible not to picture how everything happened that night.  I was also ultra-alert every time someone got up during the movie or came into the theater after the lights went down.


And while I'm trying to process the movie, I'm also trying to process how something like that happens.  What makes someone descend down that dark road?  Was it nature or nurture?  How could anyone ever stop something so unexpected?  How did people in the theater feel in that moment?  How do they move on with their lives?


I got really emotional toward the end of the movie.  There's a theme of the characters choosing to do the right thing versus choosing to be selfish or evil, and of certain characters moving on with their lives.  And then I also thought of the plane that landed in the Hudson River - on the other side of the Battery Park theater - and how all those people survived a plane crash, something people don't usually walk away from.  While all these people last weekend went to a movie, the last place you'd expect to not walk away from, and yet.  All of this was too much, I had to cry it out for a few minutes as the credits rolled. 


I have a terrible habit of making terrible jokes, usually in the form of eye-rolling puns, right after a tragedy - it's a sideways way of dealing with it, of avoiding looking something horrific straight in the face.  So I'm glad when I'm overwhelmed by an event, when I cry for people I've never met.  It reminds me that we're all human, all connected, and that life is ever so fragile, and a gift to be intensely grateful for every single moment.