When Our Town opened on Broadway in February 1938, playwright Thornton Wilder had written it 20 years after WWI had ended, nine years into the Great Depression and in a time that probably felt a bit like now, watching the world slide toward another war, and wondering how caught up in it America would be.

Some years ago, I was with my family at the Marrakesh International Film Festival, where I took my daughter to the world premiere of Body of Lies, an espionage thriller by master intrigue and action director, Ridley Scott. Events this week brought that screening back to me.