It’s January out there, which means that many with a melancholy streak tend to note, with some existential ennui, the implications of the calendar’s turning page. (Pink Floyd’s “Time” offers the definitive expression of such sentiments, but that’s so gloomy we won’t even provide a link—here’s a little Dougie MacLean instead.)
For cinephiles, however, passage of time comes with a silver lining. Good movies – that is, movies worth watching more than once (and as we’ve argued, any movie really worth seeing should be screened at least three times) – can get even more interesting over the years. It’s not that all fine films necessarily “age well”—some, often those that were revolutionary in their day, can lose some of their capacity to astonish (and we’re okay with that . . . but that’s a topic for another day). Rather, it is that as you, ahem, mature, the movie changes as well, and evolves with you, often thrillingly.
Don’t panic—I’ve not just thrown my lot in with post-modernism, or renounced (striving for) objectivity or the existence of “the truth.” Indeed, what we have here is exactly the opposite of those deep dives into nihilism. The movie unfolding before your eyes is fixed, absolute and unchanging. In fact in some ways fiction is truer, and more certain, than non-fiction. Consider that as new historical evidence comes to light, as it commonly does, our understanding of “what happened,” say, regarding the causes, course and consequences of the First World War can change. But Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece about the Great War, Paths of Glory, will always and forever be exactly the same. The movie is set in stone—if after an additional viewing you see something new (as well you should), or change your mind about a character, a scene, or a subtext, it is you that is different. As Val (the magnificent Kristen Stewart) put it in one of the great films of the twenty-first century, Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, “The text is an object. It’s going to change perspective based on where you’re standing.”
And as the saying goes, where you stand depends on where you sit. Take for example Roger Ebert’s reflections on (and ever-changing relationship with) one of his favorite films, Fellini’s La Dolce Vita: “When I saw ‘La Dolce Vita’ in 1960, I was an adolescent for whom ‘the sweet life’ represented everything I dreamed of.” Ten years later, Ebert, a wunderkind journalist then about the age of the movie’s protagonist Marcello Mastroianni, was thrilled to find himself “living in a version of Marcello’s world.” But by 1980 he saw the character “not as a role model but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found”; screened again yet another decade later, “Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him.” Not bad for one movie.
Sidebar: A distinct phenomenon but an irresistible story. In 1953 Ray Bradbury, then thirty three years old, published his celebrated, dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, about the political awakening of its young, book-burning protagonist, Guy Montag (Truffaut directed a film version in 1966). Forty years later, my Aunt Georgia collaborated with Bradbury on a theatrical adaptation—she told me that he was now much more interested in exploring the perspective of Guy’s boss, the old, authoritarian enforcer Captain Beatty.
But I digress. The main point remains that movies, essentially preserved in amber for eternity (like novels but unlike theater), nevertheless can change radically over time—due solely to our evolving reception of them. (And not to get too freaky on you, but this also sort of means that each viewer in the same moment sees a somewhat different film.) As we’ve discussed previously, a classic illustration of this is The Graduate. We loved this movie then, we love this movie now. But not quite in the same way. Might Benjamin be simple, shallow, and self-indulgent? With director Mike Nichols, might we conclude that he will, in fact, turn out be exactly like his parents? Perhaps. And the movie is very suggestive of that interpretation. (What, you thought he was the first young person in history who wanted to be “different” from those preposterous anachronisms of the previous generation?) In either case, with the passage of time, it becomes clear that The Graduate is Mrs. Robinson’s movie.
The definitive exemplar of what it means to age with the movies remains My Dinner with Andre, which, as if prescribed by a doctor one should revisit at least once every seven years—just to see how you are doing. It is quite something to experience this singular masterpiece at different stages of your life, and have different passages jump out at you. Consider Andre’s final words: “A baby holds your hands, and then there’s suddenly this huge man, lifting you off the ground. And then he’s gone. Where is that son?” Are you the parent in that passage, or the child?
My own relationship with Andre has certainly changed over the years. If you’re not with Andre in college, well, that’s not a good sign. But when you’re Wally’s age, thirty-five, say, with a job and a family and bills to pay, well, you notice things about Andre that had perhaps never occurred to you before: that he was an often-absent father, and that it is easy not to worry about money . . . when you don’t have to worry about money. Nevertheless, I’m still with Andre, and so is the movie. As Amy Taubin put it, “Nothing is concluded. . . But on the way home, Wally is surprised to find that something has changed in the way he attends to the city as he sees it from the taxi window.” My Dinner with Andre can change your perspective as well. But differently, every time.
