Echoes of the Garage

Illustrated & written by Roberto Sanchez

Date/Time Stamp: 4:48 p.m., September 27th, Saturday.

The morning started at 6 a.m. after insomnia kept me up until 1, then awake again at 3. By the time my alarm rang, I wasn’t tired — which I found particular, since I’d barely slept.

So I went out to make some plastic bag sales.

After that, I wanted an escape, so I went to see the new Leonardo DiCaprio film.

I got there 30 minutes before the film. Yes, I’d mentioned earlier that I wasn’t tired, but as I sat back in the recliner chair by myself, under the coolness of the air conditioner, I began to relax. Peace was coming. Then it left as people started walking in.

I watched it at Cinepolis Luxury Cinemas in Inglewood on IMAX.

I walked out of the theater and had to go straight into a delivery run — the kind of rhythm that makes up my life. Maybe that’s why the movie hit me the way it did: not as an escape, but as something to reflect on in between the ordinary.

The beginning didn’t land for me. It felt clunky, like it was trying too hard to set everything up. But once you get past that, the movie opens up. It becomes something touching, layered, and surprisingly human. By the middle, I realized I wasn’t just watching — I was learning.

What I learned isn’t easy to put into words yet, but it has to do with struggle, chaos, and connection — with how people hold themselves together in the middle of too much.

Toward the end, I got three missed calls and had to step into the side aisle — the little walkway by the entrance of the IMAX theater. I stood there, phone in hand, half in the movie and half in life. On the giant screen, I watched DiCaprio’s character get a kiss on the head from his daughter. And it hit me:

You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be there.

That was the lesson I walked out with.

Verdict: Not perfect, but powerful. Worth seeing — especially if you let it sit with you after the credits roll.

What struck me wasn’t the politics or the action, though those were there. It was that Leo’s character never poisoned his daughter against her mom, even though he had every reason to. He was goofy, drugged, imperfect — but never bitter. And that’s what she saw in the end. That’s why the last scene hit so hard. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be there. That’s enough.