First Touch

It all started with a few pictures which appeared on the internet. Some beautiful set shots of a beach, of hills, a sunset. Even before I knew anything else about the film, I longed to see this, just because of the beauty of these pictures. When I started reading about the film, about the story and who was involved in this, I was fairly sure that I needed to see the film. Back then I thought that maybe it would get a wider release…giving me the chance to see it close to home, or at least in Berlin.

I had seen JJ Feild and Benedict Cumberbatch in To The Ends of The Earth, and it’s always interesting to see how different actors are when they appear together in different films. But really, the landscape shots were what I came back to again and again. I started following the production blog, reading all the little tidbits I could get, and I really enjoyed getting all this background information, the production photos and commentary by the cast and crew. And then there was the story. I tried to avoid spoilers, but the reason for the journey was of course obvious, and it moved me quite a bit. I spent a lot of time thinking about dying, about not finishing things, about the luxury of planning ahead a whole lifetime, always optimistically thinking that there would still be a lifetime ahead of me. It wasn’t so much depressing as sobering and putting things into perspective a bit. I mean, it’s not the first piece of art that deals with this topic, but it was something which I kept coming back to.

After a while it became clear that once it was released, I wouldn’t really have the best chance of seeing it on the big screen. I hoped that it might still come to a festival close to my city, but it appeared that it wouldn’t.

And then there was the week after pentecost, which my department takes off as a research week. I knew that the film would be released a few weeks prior to that, but I hoped that it might still be shown in a London theatre somewhere, because for this week, I booked a plane ticket to London in the hopes to see the film. And when it came out, it seemed as if it would stay in Leicester Square for a while longer, and I kept refreshing the internet site, hoping that it would still be on when I was actually coming to London. And then, just in that week, the film stopped being shown at Leicester Square, to be picked up again a few days after I would have to go home again.

What to do?

Facebook! I asked (and whoever is responsible for the Third Star Facebook group: THANK YOU!) if there was any chance of seeing it in London in the week I was there and they suggested Watermans in Brentford. Relieved to not have booked the plane ticket just to miss the purpose of my journey, I booked a ticket to the showing there and started to plan my trip to London.

To follow the rest of Maria’s amazing journey visit her blog