Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center is the destination of Devorah and Mindy’s secret trip to Manhattan to see a movie, an outing that makes the place a threshold between the protected world they know and the unfamiliar city beyond it. The visit begins as an act of youthful defiance; the film they encounter there unsettles that sense of adventure and later gives Devorah a way to think about violence both outside and within her community.

Setting and Approach

The girls travel to Manhattan after a snowy Shabbos keeps Mindy away from her usual visit. They take the subway with their heads lowered, afraid of being recognized, and make their way toward Lincoln Center through tall snowbanks and piles of blackened slush. The difficult walk feels to Devorah like a revolutionary trek: the city is not simply a destination but a space they are entering without permission.

At the Sony theater, their long skirts, thick beige stockings, and matching bob haircuts tucked behind headbands mark them as conspicuous visitors. Devorah searches for auditorium 2 and mistakes a room near the top of a glass building for the screening they intended to attend. They enter a small theater with a balcony, red curtains, and red velvet seats, expecting an IMAX experience.

The Movie and Its Immediate Effect

The film is Mystic River, not the IMAX they had planned to see. Its story includes a child’s kidnapping, a girl’s murder, and further deaths; the characters seem angry and burdened by secrets. For Devorah, who has never seen a movie, the experience raises basic uncertainties about what film represents: reality, a true narrative, or entertainment. The screen does not feel safely separate from life. She feels violated and guilty, wondering whether her independence has led her toward grief.

Mindy is frightened by the realization that they are watching a film with live actors, and Devorah is frightened by her own boldness. Neither leaves the theater. Outside, on the corner of Sixty-eighth Street and Broadway, sunlight glares off the snow as Mindy rests a gloved hand in Devorah’s. The two stand together without speaking. They do not return to the theater.

Retrospective Significance

The actors’ faces fade from Devorah’s memory, but the bodies remain associated with foreboding. Even after she has watched many films and learned to recognize famous performers, she cannot recall Sean Penn’s appearance in Mystic River. At the time, lacking a frame of reference for the actors’ voices and expressions, she experiences the characters as frighteningly real—people trapped in a violent scene rather than figures safely contained by a movie.

Devorah initially wonders whether the film confirms warnings about the outside world. As she grows older, however, she recognizes that dangers like those depicted on screen also exist in her own community, where secrecy allows them to persist. Lincoln Center thus becomes the setting for an early, unsettled encounter with representations of violence and the beginning of a later contrast: a society that acknowledges its dangers may better prepare people to face them than one that withholds knowledge.