'The Mosquito Coast'
In the cinema one traveled before beginning the trip. Now it's different. There are virtual tours of the museums and walks with Street View.
So, a reading, a report or a movie, triggered the imagination. The Pont Neuf, a sculpture by Bernini, the Bellagio in Las Vegas or the African savannah emerged on the horizon of the possible.
Today, the excess saturates the retina. The screens of our devices shape hotels (even rooms), streets, monuments and restaurants (even dishes). The image does not have to be real, but its precision formats our fantasy. The reverie of the distant is pixelated.
In the face of the avalanche, there is only acceptance or rejection. Sometimes I try to be radical: see nothing, know nothing and let myself go. But it does not work; my neurosis ends up shooting Searches in remote blogs. The data and the coordinates move the refuge towards the novel, towards the cinema.
In the narrated the encounter between place and character changes something, awakens something. That kind of revelation is not usual in reality. Despite the 'experience-travel' label, it is rare to find it on a weekend getaway, or a week, or two. I do not criticize it. Aesthetic enjoyment, gastronomic pleasure, the calm that causes the rupture of everyday life, are desirable by themselves. Desirable, but insufficient.
The emotional goal is a fiction that, although unattainable, nourishes the path. Perhaps that is why I look for films in which the journey transforms. A distant environment is not enough. There has to be someone to get through.