One thing about Iron Lung that's still sticking with me isn't about any of the scenes individually but how it leaves you feeling AFTER the movie has ended. Credits float on past on a gently rolling ocean of blood. The lights in the theater come up, and everything feels distinctly *wrong*. You step out of the auditorium and the hallway feels too large; the echoes of other movies you've maybe heard of coming from their own auditoriums sound too lively. You know it's all exactly the same as it was when you entered the theater, when you got your snacks and you scanned your ticket and found your seats. All the cardboard cutouts still stand lifelessly with people taking photos and kids playing around them; the movie posters still hang in their glass cases. You step back outside and it's familiar to you - same sky, same streetlights, same roads.
And yet you're still sick with the feeling of dread, of guilt, of confusion. Helplessness. Futility. Terror. It sits in your gut and weighs on your chest and you can't stop thinking. And then a life vest with a small blinking indicator is spotted somewhere out there in the vast sea and you remember:
At least he tried. Even knowing he would die he defied a god, defied all expectations and preconceptions that everyone had and he TRIED. If he couldn't make it then he would make damn sure that the ones to come after him had a better shot. And that's what being human is all about, isn't it? Trying, even when you know it's fruitless, even when you feel it's all going to shit. Trying for the sake of others because it's bigger than you. It's bigger than me. It's bigger than all of us. Larger than an endless ocean of blood on some alien moon, larger than the fading stars, larger than the sliver of our universe a god observes us through.
