Pauline Kael wrote, after seeing Shoeshine (1946): “I came out of the theater, tears streaming, and overheard the petulant voice of a college girl complaining to her boyfriend, ‘Well I don’t see what was so special about that movie.’ I walked up the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance of Shoeshine. For if people cannot feel Shoeshine, what can they feel?”

A similar experience for me happened when watching Still Alice; a heartwrenching existential play written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Continue reading