Movies, to differing degrees, are made to enforce the stories they tell, and we applaud when such power is wielded efficiently. An Oscar-winning drama makes us cry, and earns our admiration, because we believe to some degree in the story on-screen; we make a pact with the film to suspend disbelief. If the story is absorbing and the director skilled, we allow ourselves to agree that the actor truly is abandoning his soulmate in a cave, and, accordingly, we ache if that actor is deft enough in his craft to make us believe his pain. His grief becomes, in a way, our grief—our pain at arm’s length,
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