MOONS OF BECOMING...

These great faces in the movie dark, these moons of becoming, are they one of the few benevolent invasions of the twentieth century, meant to offset all the other images of slaughter, torture, and humiliation? Or is their intense allure just another danger, cunningly disguised? Or is it that the riddles of acting fascinate us at this moment in our history, especially the one in which we discover that we are not simply ourselves?

In other words, in a hundred years or so of marketed movie entertainment and its frequent flirtations with business glory and even artistic distinction, is it possible that the most profound thing that has been going on is the way in which so many of us have been led to think less of reality and more of dream, and the manner in which acting has carried us over that hump? Suppose the whole thing has been designed to make us politely disordered? Or more elastic?