There was those days of Sunday prayer when you could feel the 
love and belonging inside the church as the choir song uplifted 
everyone from their chairs and had them singing and cheering 
along. While those days may still exist in churches, our best 
temples of human emotional bonding have become movie theatres.

In the last few years, there have been an array of films that 
have drawn large audiences into the auditoriums and halfway 
through the film, each person would realize that they were part 
of something bigger and more powerful.

At the release of Mel Gibson’s biblical film The Passion of the 
Christ, there were several reported seizures within the audience 
and many more emotional breakdowns because of the powerful nature 
and message of the film.

Or how about the thousands of hardcore fans who camped outside 
the theatres for weeks at a time to be the first to see the 
latest installation in the Star Wars prequels, Revenge of the 
Sith.

Was this the beginning of a new age of cinema where the 
attendance was less about ht film and more about the belonging 
factor? Belonging to a religious group or a convention of Star 
Trek /Star Wars movie buffs.

Films like the Harry Potter series and more recently Harry Potter 
and the Goblet of Fire skyrocketed box-office ticket sales to 
amazing new heights. The word of mouth on films like Charlie and 
the Chocolate Factory spreads through schools and it draws every 
child as if it was a mandatory school project.
 
Then there are those fans of art house films that go see films 
because of a shared interest in auteur films. The more recent 
examples include films like Memento, Mulholland Drive, Crash and 
Machiavelli Hangman that offer its audiences a new way of 
seeing films. The audiences may be completely confused by these 
films but they come and stay because of the atmosphere and the 
knowledge that the room is full of others who watch movies for 
the sake of being surprised at the risk of getting confused once 
in a while.
 
While watching Machiavelli Hangman an audience member offered 
this explanation, "Some jokes I didn’t get but I still laughed 
out loud because everyone else was laughing. This becomes a 
micro-community experience and it really enhances the enjoyment 
factor. 

Elsa Nguyen is a movie reviewer. She likes
looking at the social factors of movies in
general, and she feels that Machiavelli Hangman
will deliver on the promise of a community of 
excited fans: http://www.hangmanmovie.com