Overrated
Just kidding. Hadn't seen one of these posts on this board yet.
shareBingo
I know why you're reading this. You're smart, you have great taste, a passion for cinema, and you see CK near the top of every 'Great Movie' list ever compiled. So with great anticipation you borrow a DVD copy and sit down for a real treat, and... you can't get through the first half hour. You fall asleep.
Surprised, you think, 'It must be me, maybe I'm tired,' so a month later, you try again. But you don't even get as far as before, and wake up drooling out the corner of your mouth as a bloated Orson Welles, with really bad age make-up, groans 'Rosebud, Rosebud'.
It doesn't make sense. You're perplexed. You've watched other films on the lists... Casablanca made you stand up and cheer, cry, laugh, feel connected to all humanity. You even adore films on the list that some might consider oblique, like 8 1/2, which you reckon reinvented cinema language, weaving in and out of memory, dreams, psyche, reality, putting the human spirit up on the screen, making you cheer, laugh, and feel connected to all humanity.
So why does CK leave you so cold? You wonder, 'What's wrong with me? Am I stupid or something?'
Your borrowed DVD copy gathers dust (notice how the lender never asks for it back?), taunting your unquiet mind: "You must watch me: I'm the greatest film of all time!" But you shudder at the thought. Life's too short and, after all, there's more engaging things to do - like scraping plaque off the dog's teeth.
Years pass. Finally, you can take it no longer. You think, 'To be a serious film lover I MUST watch Citizen Kane! Maybe I was too immature before - yes, that must be it!' So you gird your loins and sit - awake! - through the whole thing. The whole turgid, ponderous, dull, vacuous, plodding, dank catastrophe. It's even worse than you feared. An emotionally and intellectually empty story. Your average six year old can invent a more complex, engaging tale.
Genuinely puzzled, you ask people who name it as one of the greatest films of all time why they li
Um, you did get that I was joking? The film is not overrated. The best ever made? I don't think so, but it's a movie you need to watch if you want to be film literate. If you find it boring, it's probably an attention span issue on your part. That's not meant as an insult, it's an observation born from concern for your well-being.
shareLove your comment. But do you know that some people can argue that your comment is a little like...ehm...Citizen Kane?
shareI adore this comment, because this sums it up for me. I *FINALLY* got through this movie, last time I attempted to was 25 years ago. I fell asleep several times back then during it, enough to see the end, but today I decided to bite the bullet and see it. Get this effer out of the way. Guess what, I fell asleep AGAIN. Determined beyond belief, I started again from the beginning, forced myself to stay awake, take in all the details I could and just watched. And watched. And watched. And then the sled was burning.
Okey-dokey. Got it done. Still didn't "get" it. I was looking for the camera angles and maybe because I've seen thousands of films after CK was made, I just didn't see anything terribly groundbreaking. The cinematography was good, most definitely. But, I still don't understand why so many people regard this is THE best movie of all time. Maybe I'll take a film class at our local university. This still leaves me going "Huh?"