By Stephen Lawson
He had to open the door, and he couldn't do it. His left hand was fat and useless, bandaged after an accident. His right hand held him up precariously, just shy of the security system's red beams. He had to open the vault door in the next three seconds or it would explode, taking his skinny body with it. The countdown just kept going.
The audience held its breath, hands gripping seats and armrests. Somewhere behind us a woman whimpered as if worried for the Chinese acrobat in danger on the screen. Her whimpers became gasps, then the gasps became screams. In less than a minute, it seemed every face in the theater had turned away from the movie. One row behind us and about 10 seats over, people sitting near the woman stood up and tried to help her. "I can't move my legs!" she cried out. Through the crowd, I couldn't see her. Someone came up from a lower row and said he was a doctor. The movie kept rolling, unwatched.
Finally the projector stopped and the house lights came up. Ushers rushed in and the woman was helped from the theater. A few people, perhaps her friends and the doctor, went with her. She was quieter and went out on walking, with their help. We got a perfunctory explanation from one of the ushers as the small group left: A woman had had a panic attack, he said. He ignored the shouted demands for more details. Then the lights went down and the movie started up again, now less urgent than it had seemed.
We hadn’t missed much. Somehow the acrobat and his buddies had survived. The movie, "Ocean's 11," had been conceived and marketed as a remake of a romp, a light Las Vegas caper flick that would have more to do with suits and smirks than with real suspense. It had delivered exactly that until those few seconds of real fear hit me. Now I was jumpy and irritable, and I couldn’t shake that feeling the whole night. The incident called up the usual scary images of a loved one suddenly stricken, and the question of what I would have done if that had been someone close to me. But it raised another nagging question, too: What was it about the movie or that scene that would have caused a panic attack in a clean, cushy multiplex in downtown San Francisco?
It's hard to answer that. I know nothing but what I saw on the screen. One possible trigger was an earlier scene in which an old man clutched his chest and a doctor was called to his side. Maybe she was just someone who subconsciously wanted attention. Yet when I looked at the movie from another angle, there was a different light shining through some of the images: A citywide blackout set off by an invading gang. Chaos and looting in its wake. An Asian man, a bomb, and a bandaged hand.
To me, those were clever plot points. Having the gang’s explosives expert set off the blackout during a prizefight was an especially nice touch. I tip my hat to the writer and to director Steven Soderbergh, who, though not a great artist, is a consummate craftsman. The way he filmed San Diego in his 2000 film "Traffic" captured perfectly the feeling of that city and the quality of light there, which I remember from summer vacations long ago. The fact that I saw it in Hong Kong, an ocean away from California, only heightened the joy of recognition.
I’m sharing my own memories to point out what everyone knows, but we often forget: I know a lot more than what I saw on the screen. So does the woman who panicked. Maybe she grew up in Cambodia, where land mines and war have crippled a lot of slender Asian men, as well as women and children who simply stepped in the wrong place. Maybe she's from Manila, where blackouts are frequent and have often hit before attempted coups, leaving residents fearing the worst each time the lights go out during politically tense times.
There is trauma here in America, too, and the tragedies of Sept. 11 proved this country is not immune even to acts of war. However, those events forced two facts into sharp relief: First, apart from the vague threat of further attacks, war and terrorism still are not a part of daily life for most people in America. Second, experiences like Sept. 11 can shift permanently the way we see the world, both in real life and in the media.
To many people in San Francisco, those shifts in perspective happened a long time ago, in places most of us know only from TV and newspapers. International migration means we share this city – indeed, this whole country – with people whose memories give a different shape to the stories the media tell. It’s well known that Hollywood movies play differently in other countries. I didn’t have to laugh all by myself in a Hong Kong theater to find that out. But until I did, I never stopped to think that even a movie showing to its “home audience” here in America, in English without subtitles, gets translated.
When economic refugees from the former Soviet Union drove home to San Francisco’s Richmond district after seeing “Titanic,” what did they tell their families and friends they had just seen? An escapist romance? A parable of rich vs. poor? Or both? A tale of triumph over adversity, a reminder that money doesn't really matter, or a bucket of sentimental slop?
Maybe this sounds like idle speculation. The analysis of pop culture is often no more than grasping at straws. Yet in a democracy, your president, your school board and even the fate of the vacant lot across the street may be decided in part by the person who sits next to you at the movies. If that poor, panicked woman watched the news that night as she recovered from her ordeal, what did she see? And what is she going to do about it?
Copyright © 2002 Stephen Lawson