In “Leaving the Movie Theater,” the author describes his departure from the cinema in a dazed and hypnotic state, seeking a sense of healing and likening the experience to entrancing orchestral music. He enters the movie theater with the desire to feel hypnotized even before the film begins, finding the entire cinematic experience to be the source of his lethargy.
The author uses rich vocabulary to describe the entire experience; when the theater darkens, the anticipation before the film, and the immersion of the audience into the world of the film. The power of cinema is able to evoke a large range of emotions from the viewer and provoke introspection after you leave the theater. Expressing his love for cinema, the author sees the light projected by the film as a gleaming vibration, a dancing cone that penetrates the darkness like a laser beam. It serves as a keyhole through which spectators peek, while sound acts as a supplement to enhance the lifelike portrayal of the images on the screen. However, would the hushed whispers of the people around you and the crunching of popcorn make the entire experience less immersive in a cinema? Or would it be an addition to creating a sensory atmosphere that can only be felt in a cinema, adding to the excitement of watching a film on a massive screen?
As the screen fades to black and the lights turn on, the echoes of the film stay in the cinema as everyone files out slowly. The visual imagery and narrative of the film stays within us even as we walk out of the theater. The cinematic experience to be a space of escape and immersion, where darkness, anonymity, and the allure of light and sound create a transformative encounter with the film.
I appreciate your writing about Barthes. Your writing seems to be a summary what Barthes said rather than a response. You can improve your writing response by writing through your experience with Cinema and how those experience reflect on Barthes’ idea of the cinema. How the cinema impacts you, before going inside the cinema and while you are inside the cinema, base on your argument here, ‘would the hushed whispers of the people around you and the crunching of popcorn make the entire experience less immersive in a cinema? Or would it be an addition to creating a sensory atmosphere that can only be felt in a cinema, adding to the excitement of watching a film on a massive screen?’ You also can elaborate more about after leaving the cinema which you already wrote a bit in your last paragraph.