Tonight I watched a movie that I really really like for the second time.
I enjoy being the only person in a group of people to have seen a good movie, mostly because if I am the only person to have seen it, no one around me can butt in with those horribly obnoxious kind-of-spoilers, where they giggle in just the place they shouldn't if anyone else is to enjoy the film, or comment "oh, yeah" on a part that seems, at the time, innocuous. I enjoy the security of knowing that will not happen, and the silence of the people who have not seen the movie. For, having never seen it, they are forced to exert an energy of concentration that I am entirely free from.
Except for this one little thing, a little thing that occurred to me tonight as the film resolved and fireworks of understanding sent spangled sparks drifting down on the heads of my illuminated friends. The movie (which movie it was, I withhold, because my generic point will be cluttered up with specifics if you know which movie I mean, and that would be so annoying) was one that made you think; the plot was original without being frightening or really all that suspenseful, and the characters were lovable as well as engaging, even the bad ones. The point of the film is not blatant, not the romantic-comedy guy-gets-girl routine, nor the action-adventure guy-gets-girl-with-large-explosions-in-background rigmarole. No, the point of this film was a bit more obscure than that, and the first time I saw it I didn't quite grasp it entirely-- at least, not enough to thoroughly verbalize. But tonight, as I watched for the second time, I saw the hidden threads that I had only guessed at the first time, the things that tied it all together and made it a coherent whole. This is my problem: I think I liked it better when I didn't get it entirely.
I still like it; it's still a very creative, enjoyable movie. But to figure it out, to see all the pieces and draw all the conclusions-- well, it's anticlimactic. Capturing the elusive continually proves to be something of a letdown.
This thought prompts the beginnings of philosophical ponderings on the concept of the chase-- why things pursued are so attractive-- because they are uncaught, immaterial to an extent, and thus can be idealized...
But I don't want to think too hard about it, because then I might understand it and well, that might just spoil everything.
