SEEING YOU AGAIN
When seen again is where a movie is put truly to the test; it can get stronger or become weaker. There is a different anxiety, a different predisposition. Movies that allow multiple viewings and sustain themselves are of a particular richness. Francois Truffaut knew this well and wisely understood that in that second viewing our attention and argumentative tension became relaxed and we could perceive more, or at least new elements from another nature.
To see a movie again is not, clearly, “to repeat the experience”. Different moments, different places, different projections, perhaps different companionships or different solitudes. And we are different when we see a film for the second, third or any number of times, for all the obviousness that can be stated and, besides, because that movie has already modified us, be it recently or a long time ago.
Upon going through Qubit’s catalogue I came upon several movies I’d like to see again. No, not Dunkirk. Yes, I’m very intrigued about what might have happened with Seven, or between myself and Seven after all these years of not seeing it. I saw it once in the Atlas Lavalle theater at the time of its release, and then again at the Atlas Lavalle several weeks after its initial release, because back then the theatrical run of a film in a big theater could last many weeks if such film proved successful at the box office.
I would also make a triple feature with Krzysztof Kieslowski. I saw The Double Life of Veronique at the Leopoldo Lugones Theater long after its praised release, and was always among the Polish filmmaker’s films I liked the least. Mannerist and mannered ––the same way Bleu would end up being––, I always kept my distance from those two lives. But perhaps, one day, you never know…
The ones I always found to be Kieslowski’s finest are those regarded as obligatory. By obligatory, I mean it as some kind of joke; I don’t like that term to talk about movies, but since they are part of the Decalogue, of the Ten Commandments turned into films… The catholic Kieslowski made his best films with A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love. Or so I certainly thought upon seeing those films on VHS.
And now we have the new Rambo movie with Stallone and his “renewed” face, I’d like to take the chance to see Over the Top again, which I remember seeing in a big theater, perhaps the Gran Rex theater or the Libertador Theater, or some other theater on Corrientes Avenue. Or a theater on Lavalle Street. It is one of the movies I have a harder time remembering in which theater I saw it. Maybe it is on account of the iconic images in Over the Top, those involving arm wrestling, being used to death in some TV show that came after. Or because I saw Over the Top a long time ago. Maybe this time around such a reunion would not be a “seeing it again” but more like the retrieval of something ––perhaps atavistic–– that remained in some layer of my memory.
Was not this supposed to be a column of recommendations? Oh, yes, with the exception of Dunkirk, I recommend all the movies I mentioned (even The Double Life of Veronique, liked by everyone else back then and because Bleu was a hit), and ––since I named him–– I also recommend anything by Francois Truffaut that you can find on QubitTV.
