For me, at least, I think that movies can provide a truer reflection (or refraction) of my experience of the world than any other form of art. Even though it was books that I first took to, music that then lodged most deeply during my most impressionable teenage and early young adult years, and theatre and (visual) art that often prompt the most complex and profound responses in me now, it's movies that - as a form - come closest to the phenomenological in what they offer: immersively experiential, and therefore emotional, associative and intellectual all mixed.
So: Donnie Darko. This was one of my favourite films back when I first saw it - several times - but then it kind of waned in my mind over the probably more than a decade during which (a) I didn't watch it again and (b) a whole lot of other stuff happened, and I began thinking of it - when I thought of it at all - as a film that I used to like, with that liking maybe fixed to a specific point in time for me (a recent rewatching didn't especially shake that, although it reminded me of some of the reasons why I'd liked it so much). But watching it again last night - on a big screen - it all came rushing back, right from the opening scene, and I was caught up in its magic the whole way through. It doesn't need parsing - this is just a great film, which has always affected and resonated with me, and still does.
(w/ David - a 15th anniversary screening at Nova)
So: Donnie Darko. This was one of my favourite films back when I first saw it - several times - but then it kind of waned in my mind over the probably more than a decade during which (a) I didn't watch it again and (b) a whole lot of other stuff happened, and I began thinking of it - when I thought of it at all - as a film that I used to like, with that liking maybe fixed to a specific point in time for me (a recent rewatching didn't especially shake that, although it reminded me of some of the reasons why I'd liked it so much). But watching it again last night - on a big screen - it all came rushing back, right from the opening scene, and I was caught up in its magic the whole way through. It doesn't need parsing - this is just a great film, which has always affected and resonated with me, and still does.
(w/ David - a 15th anniversary screening at Nova)
