We go to the movies to dream.
When the audience filed into Theater 9 at the Century 16 multiplex in Aurora, Colorado, the early morning of July 20, they were there to experience that state of consciousness that only movies can provide. Somewhere between waking life and hypnotic trance, the act of watching a movie is one of voluntary surrender, of letting go of our daily psychological defenses and allowing our imaginations to be colonized by the enveloping sounds and images on the screen.
That unique state of consciousness was surely all the more intense on July 20, when the crowd of parents, children, friends and families piled into the theater to watch "The Dark Knight Rises," the last of Christopher Nolan's Batman films and one that epitomizes the director's distinctively immersive style.