Knowing Fact, Opinion, and Living at Peace

The 2nd Grade Lesson I Relearned Reviewing Movies

My sabbatical landed in summer of 2023. I would’ve preferred to sabbath in the fall and early winter, because I like the weather better, but my church needed me back as school started, so the summer made sense. One good things about a summer sabbatical is an abundance of movies hitting the theatre. That summer I bought an AMC A-list membership (3 movies / week for $20/ month) and dedicated much of my sabbath to exploring stories — films, books, prestige TV.

To aid me on my journey I started a Letterboxd account and started following a few online movie critics and cinephiles. On Letterboxd, I write short reviews of each movie and they are nothing more and nothing less than my opinion. As I dove into movie-dom, most of the good reviewers I followed would frequently reminded their readers and viewers that “art is subjective and your opinion is as valid as mine,” or something like that.

So, what did I learn? I learned that (1) We all have strong opinions, (2) those opinions should be held loosely, and (3) people don’t know the difference between fact and opinion, and get very mad about people’s opinions.