Psycho. #43

Hello! I have a question for Caspar Salmon which is this: have you, as A Cinephile, ever properly enjoyed some sci-fi or fantasy movies? If so, which ones? If not, could you explain why not? Signed: a cinema enjoyer who would not describe themselves as a cinephile per se, but who is curious to know if Proper Cinema People do sometimes also enjoy space etc stuff, or if they think those genres are inherently trash. Thank you!

A couple of years ago I was vaguely dating someone at a time when some significant astrological event took place. I can’t even remember what it was — maybe one of the other planets was closer to Earth than ever before; maybe a comet was hanging about the place. At any rate, on this particular evening we were returning to my flat after an evening out, and as we got closer to home this fellow remembered that this was the best night for looking at whatever it was (God, what was it!) and expressed disappointment that he didn’t have his telescope. I — I’m afraid — expressed insufficient interest in this happening, and had no particular yearning to look at the [planet/comet/nebula], and my innamorato sharply rebuked me. I said, apologetically, that I had no great interest in space, unfortunately — and added, to illustrate my point, that I don’t even know in what order the planets of the solar system go. At this, he grew almost angry, saying that I must not have paid attention as a child; I must have learnt it. He challenged me, saying that I was otherwise intelligent: why, then, was I so ignorant about this, so incurious, such a philistine? 

I don’t know if I have a ready answer, but I can say — and I am really not proud of this, but simply have to accept it — that my brain simply shuts down when asked to consider outer space, galaxies, asteroids and the like. Where, for other people, the great beyond represents an overwhelming kind of force, a subject of yearning, an existential question, to me it holds almost no pull whatsoever. When I look at the night sky on a clear evening, it is as, simply, a beautiful shimmering thing — it’s perfectly idiotic, I know; I might as well be looking at a great twinkling blanket. As a child, on summer nights in August, when we had friends to stay for the holidays, my siblings and pals and I would lay blankets out on the grass and lie there, gazing up at the stars, and we could see several shooting stars in one go; and sometimes I felt I could behold the depth of the stars, as when you lose yourself in a 3D magic image — and on those occasions it felt beguiling and magnificent. But I wasn’t interested in the science of it, couldn’t have less interest in going there; and what I loved, instead, was nattering with my friends in the warm summer air turning chillier now, fetching blankets, talking shit and feeling so small. Some — many! — people are fascinated by the sheer mind-warping dimensions of the cosmos and all the unknown and unimaginable scientific properties yet to be discovered by us; I have always preferred the tiniest of things, and in great part this is what I look for in cinema.