At least once, you will probably be rewarded for your trouble with abaaaaaad movie,and everyone will have a different definition of that.

Yesterday, a woman sitting in my row said she couldn’t give “The September Issue” a favorable vote for the Audience Award because its ostensible subject, “fashion,” was so lightweight. She doesn’t want it to win. A prize might give it attention that more serious fare deserves and needs.

I was shocked, as if we’d seen two different movies. I had just seen the story of a long professional marriage between Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington, illustrative for anyone who works with other people (especially difficult people). I saw a filmabout personal transformation – how people transcend their early years, shaped by their choices. I saw the real life version of “The Devil Wears Prada” and”The Office.” It was about art and commerce, taste anddecisionmaking.It was beautifully photographed and skillfully edited.

I gave it highest marks, but that woman might be right.

Would I rather you see “The September Issue” or “Reporter”? No contest. See “Reporter.” Would I rather you buy “Vogue” or “The New York Times”? Are you bleeping kidding me?

“Reporter” reminded me what a wuss I was when I took money to be a journalist and how I was and am in awe of the people who are willing to go, and go again, even after terrifying chases through the jungle and bouts with the deadliest form of malaria and nonstop encounters with the worst that humanity can produce and experience. Nicholas Kristof has the kind of courage and skill I didn’t have the guts to aspire to, much less emulate.

That documentary introduced me to the term “psychic numbing,” and comforts me with the facts: human beings are designed, biologically, to tune out widespread suffering. Our brains, our hormones, our chemistry is programmed to care about ONE, and as soon as one more is added, we begin to care less immediately. When confronted with the suffering of millions, we shut off our compassion as a matter of self-preservation.

Kristof might appear cold and uncaring in this documentary, but he likens his clinicalattitude in the face ofgenocide and atrocity to that of a doctor. A certain emotional distance is required for physicians, soldiers, law enforcement officers, others whose jobs require cool heads and steady hands.

I confess. I am in possession of that ability to distance myself. Did I have it before I became a reporter or did the job force me to learn how NOT to care about everyone and everything all the time? I remember being in the newsroom during the Jim Jones tragedy in Guyana, back in the days of wire service machines that type-type-type-typed and signalled bulletins with ding-ding-ding. All day, ding-ding-ding as more bodies were discovered.

Some time after that, I got a bout of what I called “news sickness.” The magnitude of the tragedy, the pictures you didn’t see of the heaps of rotting bodies (we wouldn’t have put them on television, but the raw feeds came to our newsroom), the insanity of the entire situation somehow penetrated my usual defenses.

I spent a couple of days crying and throwing up, and then I got my act together and went back to feeling very little about the tragedies that were my daily bread.

As frustrating and unrewarding as the Sundance experience can be, there’s a reason I keep coming back. Inspiration. I’m refreshed and challenged by the parade of creativity, the persistence of artists, the new ideas and fresh ways of looking at old subjects.

And I always fall in love with talent and good hearts here. Ben Affleck was largely inarticulate at the Q&A after “Reporter,” of which he was the Executive Producer. But, bless him forever, he managed to say that if celebrity was good for anything, it’s the ability to direct attention tothe people ofDarfur, Congo, Rwanda, and reporters like Kristof. Jack White? I’m still in stunnage after “It Might Get Loud.” Maybe you know all about him, but this was my first introduction to his history and his oeuvre. Next time I’m in Franklin, Tennessee, I might stalk his house like a groupie. And I will never look at a guitar the same way again. I used to be married to a guitar player and I know now that I only half “got it”- I never understood the way I do today. (Hint: see this if you are thinking of marrying a person who picks.)

I gotta go. There are buses to wait for,lines to stand in, people waiting to shove me and step on my feet and whack me with their backpacks. And maybe a movie, and if I’m lucky, new eyes through which to see a part of the world.