At noon today I finally saw Adventureland. Just me and a twenty-something couple sitting a few rows behind me and three seats to the right. From the film's first shot, its first line, I felt a pang in my gut -- I really wish I hadn't come to see this particular film alone. Like Garden State or Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist were of late (or Amelie, Love Actually, A Very Long Engagement, Life is Beautiful, Jerry Maguire, Ghost, Annie Hall, or Casablanca, to name a few more), Adventureland is very much meant to be seen with someone you love -- or, at least, someone you have some history with, perhaps with the possibility of romance.  But, as I was alone, it provided me ample time to reflect on myself and those who I wish would have been sitting to my left as the film played in front of me.

And Adventureland is very much a film that relies on its audience to impart pieces of themselves onto the screen. The film provides the latticework and scaffolding and foundation, but it's what I brought into the theatre with me that pushed the film further than it could have ever reached on its own. In James I saw myself. In Emily, Nicole. In James's fears and regrets about the future and his past, his romanticism and sensitivity and his love of poetry, art, literature and his confusion about how to turn that love into a life, a career -- it all became mine, it was mine. It is mine. The uneasy, warring balance of idealistic optimism and pragmatic cynicism -- it's a constant in my life still. Not only could I relate to what I was seeing on screen, but I could empathize, feel, really feel everything deep in my heart, recall everything from the recesses of my memory. I was no longer watching actors or characters projected in front of me; instead, I was watching myself, my summer between high school and college, my first spontaneous kiss with Nicole, not underneath a bridge in Pittsburgh, but in a dark theatre in Sarasota as Garden State's closing credits rolled in front of us.

Any film that has the power to become a vehicle for such a personal and cathartic experience is something very, very special. Adventureland is. It simultaneously made me re-experience love lost and the transformative journey of that emotional growth and yearn to fall in love all over again. Adventureland is a beautiful, splendid, sublime film. I love it. No. I'm in love with it.