Some people don't understand how I (or others) can watch a movie over and over throughout the years. They see it once, they move on, and they can't see any benefit to witnessing a story for which they already know the ending. Last weekend I watched "Before Sunrise" for the I don't know how many-th time and I was reminded why I will always revisit the movies I love.
I hadn't seen it in quite a while. Ever since "Before Sunset" came out, I had sort of gravitated toward that one. I guess I was more compelled by two people seasoned by age, dealing with what might have been than by the romanticism of their one youthful night ten years before. I knew from the opening scene that the revisit was long overdue.
One obvious reason I'll watch a movie again is that I usually catch something new. Maybe it's not that I don't remember seeing it before, it's just that it might stand out to me more the next time around. For example, in "Before Sunrise," there's a scene where Jesse and Celine are sitting at an outdoor cafe talking, when they are approached by a gypsy woman, a fortune teller. The actual palm reading is nothing special (not this time anyway), just your average "you are becoming a woman," etc., but after the gypsy woman has been paid and begins walking away, she gives them a little bonus message, if you will, as she walks away. She says:
"You need to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life. Only if you find peace in yourself will you find true connection with others."
I was 17 the first time I saw this movie. Coming from this kooky gypsy character, I probably paid it the same cynical attention that the young Jesse character does at that time, if I paid it much attention at all. But this time, probably my 19th time seeing the movie, I was so taken by it, I paused the movie and wrote it down. You need to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life...I am still chewing on this one, trying to figure out what it means to me. I like it.
As I go completely off the hippy reservation, let me just say that movies are not like wine. They are completed works, sealed, delivered, and unchanging. Like with any artistic work in any medium, however, the beauty of the art is not just in the color of the paints, the clever wordplay, or the emotional charge of the performance. The beauty is also in how we react to the art, what it does to us, how it affects the way we view ourselves and life in general. We, of course, are always, constantly changing so it makes sense that movies, like any art, mean different things to us at different times in our lives. If I had seen "Before Sunset" as a 17-year-old kid, I probably would have hated it. I would have thought it was a pointless wallow in a poor, cynical choice of a second act in the story of Jesse and Celine. But as an inescapably somewhat jaded adult, it hit home like an earthquake in the middle of the night.
I guess my point is actually really simple. The movies don't change, but we do and so, while we might still know how they end, our evolving perspectives can change what the movie really means to us. And that's what we truly love about movies, isn't it? Not their plots, not their effects, not even their acting. I just think we just love the way they make us feel. I loved "Before Sunrise" at 17 and I love it just as much at 31. It's a beautiful film about the purity and precociousness of young love that exists in the magical realm between realism and romanticism, where you can't say for sure what is real and what is too good to be true.
I hadn't seen it in quite a while. Ever since "Before Sunset" came out, I had sort of gravitated toward that one. I guess I was more compelled by two people seasoned by age, dealing with what might have been than by the romanticism of their one youthful night ten years before. I knew from the opening scene that the revisit was long overdue.
One obvious reason I'll watch a movie again is that I usually catch something new. Maybe it's not that I don't remember seeing it before, it's just that it might stand out to me more the next time around. For example, in "Before Sunrise," there's a scene where Jesse and Celine are sitting at an outdoor cafe talking, when they are approached by a gypsy woman, a fortune teller. The actual palm reading is nothing special (not this time anyway), just your average "you are becoming a woman," etc., but after the gypsy woman has been paid and begins walking away, she gives them a little bonus message, if you will, as she walks away. She says:
"You need to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life. Only if you find peace in yourself will you find true connection with others."
I was 17 the first time I saw this movie. Coming from this kooky gypsy character, I probably paid it the same cynical attention that the young Jesse character does at that time, if I paid it much attention at all. But this time, probably my 19th time seeing the movie, I was so taken by it, I paused the movie and wrote it down. You need to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life...I am still chewing on this one, trying to figure out what it means to me. I like it.
As I go completely off the hippy reservation, let me just say that movies are not like wine. They are completed works, sealed, delivered, and unchanging. Like with any artistic work in any medium, however, the beauty of the art is not just in the color of the paints, the clever wordplay, or the emotional charge of the performance. The beauty is also in how we react to the art, what it does to us, how it affects the way we view ourselves and life in general. We, of course, are always, constantly changing so it makes sense that movies, like any art, mean different things to us at different times in our lives. If I had seen "Before Sunset" as a 17-year-old kid, I probably would have hated it. I would have thought it was a pointless wallow in a poor, cynical choice of a second act in the story of Jesse and Celine. But as an inescapably somewhat jaded adult, it hit home like an earthquake in the middle of the night.
I guess my point is actually really simple. The movies don't change, but we do and so, while we might still know how they end, our evolving perspectives can change what the movie really means to us. And that's what we truly love about movies, isn't it? Not their plots, not their effects, not even their acting. I just think we just love the way they make us feel. I loved "Before Sunrise" at 17 and I love it just as much at 31. It's a beautiful film about the purity and precociousness of young love that exists in the magical realm between realism and romanticism, where you can't say for sure what is real and what is too good to be true.
As I was looking for a picture to post with this entry, I stumbled on another blog where the author(?) was saying if you didn't see this film for the first time when you were 17-22, you missed your chance, that if you were to see it for the first time outside of that window, you would see these characters talking about life and its possibilities and groan at them to grow up already.
God, I hope that isn't true. I get what he or she means, that if we were to listen to our 18-yr-old selves talking about what we found so fascinating back then, we would want to slap ourselves. Believe me, I definitely get that. But I would hope that even if a first time viewer were not exactly bowled over by a discussion about the logistics of reincarnation, that, even in spite of that, they could not miss the heart of the film, which, to me, is two people finding themselves in each other.
God, I hope that isn't true. I get what he or she means, that if we were to listen to our 18-yr-old selves talking about what we found so fascinating back then, we would want to slap ourselves. Believe me, I definitely get that. But I would hope that even if a first time viewer were not exactly bowled over by a discussion about the logistics of reincarnation, that, even in spite of that, they could not miss the heart of the film, which, to me, is two people finding themselves in each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment