This week I finished:

Citizen Kane, starring Orson Welles: Regular readers of my Sunday posts know that since a few movies led me to find art and expression in the medium that I had missed before. Mainly I enjoyed the subtlety, nuance, and complexity that got me thinking about life, society, myself, and art in general.

Besides Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day, I found movies I considered masterpieces, like Tokyo Story. I watched Grand Illusion again and it held up, though not as much. Not everything people recommended measured up, like Mulholland Drive and Parasite.

Eventually I had to watch Citizen Kane again. I watched it once before, but probably decades ago, long before I started appreciating movies more. I knew what “Rosebud” referred to and I remembered many scenes, but I hadn’t watched it critically. I wouldn’t be surprised if at the time I looked for entertainment alone from movies.

Watching it this time, I watched in two parts not out of any plan but because life works out that way. The first part was until the party after he hired the other paper’s writers, with the dancing girls and when Jed wondered if they might corrupt him.

While watching, I worried about what I’d write here. I felt I didn’t see greatness. The characters seemed to be overacted. I didn’t find them compelling. I wondered if people liked it for historical reasons that people in the industry valued but that faded for the rest of us.

Then two nights ago I couldn’t sleep. Normally I don’t like turning on screens when I want to sleep, and I’m mostly trying to develop the last bits of my book so didn’t want to distract my mind from my own work, but I started watching from there.

I saw what all the fuss was about: how his character developed, how he related to people, how he acted to avoid facing his demons and vulnerabilities but instead had a fortune to fund his avoidance, how the movie raised issues without forcing them on you but made you think about them. The issues were human issues, universal. They affect us all.

Somehow it didn’t seem as subtle and nuanced as the movies I mentioned above, but its brashness and boldness in style and acting worked just as well. It was larger than life, but no less accessible.

After watching it, despite it being time to sleep, I restarted it intending to watch just the beginning to his mom sending him away. I wanted to see how a few details connected, figuring I could do what I do with many movies: watch at 1.5 or double speed.

Well, I couldn’t watch at faster speed. There was too much detail. Next I found I couldn’t stop looking for details since they were woven in everywhere, from choice in word to clothing, to camera angle, to sound, and every element of a movie.

My favorite so far: when Jed says he has a hunch the declaration of principles “might turn out to be something pretty important,” he looks almost at the camera, which means almost at the viewer in the eye.

It touches on relationships with parents, with media, control over resources, corruption, responsibility, and how when we don’t like parts of ourselves, we may spend the bulk of our lives avoiding facing ourselves. In the process we can destroy all our relationships including with ourselves, exhaust all our resources, and still keep pushing. That avoidance and compensation happens to us as individuals and society, certainly the US today.

I wish I could write more, but I could probably write for hours on Citizen Kane so have to cut myself off. It anyone out there wants to talk about it, I’d be happy to. I recommend this movie.

I expect to keep watching this movie for the rest of my life. The internet has countless reviews and commentaries. I’ve started a few and expect to process a bunch more.

Meanwhile I’m about halfway through the second volume of The Gulag Archipelago and don’t want to take too long to get back to it.

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