In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.
— Bertolt Brecht, “Motto” from Svendborg Poems

Chances are, you don’t care very much about movies right now. I can’t say I blame you. My father died two months ago, about 11 days before the world began tipping into chaos, and my mother spent the following five and a half weeks in hospital, slowly receding from a life whose terms she no longer appeared willing to accept. And in the anguish and uncertainty of those weeks, I found myself thinking hard about what people call “the consolations of art”, and whether this might in fact mean anything beyond an elegant turn of phrase.

Artists, of course, will swear that it does. Right now our newspapers – accessed online, like so much else – are filled with helpful and...