the Addison Recorder

Pop culture dispatches from the Great Lakes

  • About
    • Authors
      • Travis J. Cook
      • -J.
      • Meryl Williams
      • Karen Martin
      • Christopher Walsh
      • Christina Brandon
      • Alex Bean
      • Andrew Rostan
      • PK Sullivan
    • Round-Ups
    • Submit to the Recorder
  • Arts
    • Films
    • Television
    • Music
    • Theatre
    • Games
    • Culinary Arts
  • Books
    • Books and Literature
    • Comics & Graphic Novels
  • Sports
    • Baseball
    • Basketball
    • Football
    • Hockey
    • Other Sports
  • Chicago
    • Events
    • History
    • Op/Ed
  • Podcasts
Pop culture dispatches from the Great Lakes

The Music Box Theatre

A Song of Human Empathy: Reflecting on The Apu Trilogy’s Restoration

June 19, 2015 by Alex Bean Leave a Comment

Everything I’m going to write here pales in comparison to Roger Ebert’s great insight in that clip above. He calls movies “a machine that generates empathy.” That’s an idea that’s stuck with me for a long time and through many movies. It might not be the first thing that leaps to mind when I consider something like Mad Max, but it’s always there. No matter how poorly crafted or cynically conceived, every movie has the capacity to connect us with the experiences of others. Most of the time that’s engaged simply to get us cheering for the protagonist and jeering at the antagonist, but our capacity for empathy can go far beyond that. It can make us stare without blinking at our own awful past. It can make us consider the furthest stretches of our capacity for love and connection. Or it can make us sit down, eat some popcorn, and see a way of life that is  both utterly foreign and thoroughly recognizable. That’s exactly what I did last week when I took in the sterling 4K restoration Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy at The Music Box Theatre.

I wrote the above paragraph on the night of Tuesday, June 16th. The next night a white supremacist terrorist took nine innocent lives in Charleston, South Carolina because he hated them for their skin color. That attack has shaken me up and brought about a significant rewrite to the rest of this piece.

[Read more…]

Posted in: Films, Historical Drama, Reviews Tagged: Satyajit Ray, The Apu Trilogy, The Music Box Theatre

Share

Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on Facebook
Facebook

Addison Recorder on Twitter

Addison Recorder
  • Andrew pays tribute to George Martin, producer without peer, and keyboard maestro Keith Emerson. https://t.co/I3N5iKiMXY 01:00:56 PM March 14, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • 90 minutes to #Oscars so one more time - Alex, Andrew, and Travis make their picks. https://t.co/X23YYQ4J3i 06:59:57 PM February 28, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • The annual Oscar Picks column is up! Alex, Andrew, and Travis tell the cold, hard truth about the nominees. https://t.co/X23YYPN7EI 01:21:01 PM February 26, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • T-minus two hours to the @TheGRAMMYs - more than enough time to revisit Andrew's Album of the Year recap. https://t.co/BhUdmb97Wi 05:59:46 PM February 15, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
  • Andrew previews the @musicboxtheatre 70mm Festival starting 2/19 and recommends some essential films! https://t.co/C2S6y3gkgq 01:04:12 PM February 12, 2016 ReplyRetweetFavorite
@addisonrecorder

Recent Posts

  • The Smartest Guys in the Room: Remembering George Martin and Keith Emerson
  • Oscar Picks 2016
  • Mr. Rostan at the Movies: 70 Millimeters of Sheer Adventure
  • The Claustrophobic Folklore of The Witch
  • 2666 at the Goodman Theater

Archives

Follow Us!

Follow @addisonrecorder

Recent Comments

  • Mr. Rostan at the Movies: 70 Millimeters of Sheer Adventure on Alex and Andrew Debate the Sight & Sound List: Part One
  • The Claustrophobic Folklore of The Witch on The Horror of Metaphor in It Follows
  • Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Catching Up With Oscar on Our Month in Pop Culture: May 2015
  • Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Catching Up With Oscar on Oscar Nomination Reactions – 2016
  • War Damn Peter on Celebrating 50 Years of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 the Addison Recorder.

Church WordPress Theme by themehall.com