January Journal: Day 6 - A movie that left a deep impression

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Day 6: A movie that left a deep impression on you /machinistm

 

 

This is difficult! I fell down a rabbit hole thinking about questions like "well, what does it mean to leave an impression?" and "did this movie really leave an impression, or did it just resonate with whatever I was already thinking at the time?". It's impossible. If I look back on this post a week from now, I'll probably vehemently disagree with my choice now, but that's a reality we're just going to have to live with. In other words, this was a really fun prompt to write about.



So, for context: In my formative years, I was a voracious consumer of film & TV. (And books, to be fair. Anything with a story.)

I was a weirdly passive kid with not a whole bunch of friends, and an obsession for American satellite channels. If left to my own devices, I could easily stare at the TV from the moment I got home from school to the moment I'd be made to go to bed. I'd watch the Children's Channel or Cartoon Network until it became late enough that the channel switched from being geared to kids to being something like "TNT, all classic movies!" And that is how I ended up watching Hitchcock films at age 11. (Both my parents worked long hours in the 90s, so bedtime wasn't a very scheduled affair in our house.)

I remember Vertigo and Rear Window especially vividly, but I can't claim that they left an impression as much as they just freaked me out - between being not quite old enough to understand what was going on, and having a less than perfect understanding of English overall, the only impression was that I went to bed while weirded out.

I hated the stupid classic movies channel at the time. Things went from being jolly and colourful and fast-paced, to black-and-white and serious. So. Boring. But, it was on that same channel that I first saw Logan's Run.

I think I started watching because it was colourful, and because the lead actor had a fantastic nose. (I remember thinking this specifically. I remember thinking he was like Luke from Star Wars, but with more nose.) It was the first thought provoking work of sci-fi that I'd ever seen, and the first time that I sort of understood some social commentary going on in a film. The utopian/dystopian (yes, both) world in that film was absolutely fascinating: everything from their notion of death to the way people reproduced was wrong, and yet oddly attractive to me. I loved the visuals, and I loved that I wasn't sure if I completely agreed with the ending of the film or not.

The thing was that I caught the film on TV, and while I was impressed with it, I had no idea what it was called or how to see it again. So, I just thought about it on and off for about a decade. It wasn't until the late 1990's/early 2000's when I saw Cabaret on TV that I
a) saw Mr Nose again and I managed to catch his name, (Michael York) and
b) learned about IMDb so I could look through his profile until I found the title of the film.
I then proceeded to download the film (this was back when it was still fairly easy to do in Finland), and realize that my memory was sort of correct and that it's still a wild ride.

If you've not seen it, don't watch any trailers. Just sit down and watch it in all it's 1970's sci-fi glory.

Googling it now, I realize it was originally a novel! How did I not know that before? That's definitely my next Audible purchase. It also occurs to me now that Cabaret is also a movie that left an impression, and I could have written an entry about that.

I'll try to sum it up in two , three, four points:
1. I love musicals, and Cabaret was a musical without being at all Disney. I both identified with and loathed Liza Minelli. I still listen to the soundtrack all the time.
2. First time I realized gay/bi people could exist in a story without it being fan fiction about X-men comics. Monumental stuff.
3. You don't have to go around feeling guilty all the time. Really. Just fuck 'em. (I'm not sure how, but that's what I got from it.)
4. It's okay to enjoy being drunk sometimes. (This is somehow related to the guilt part. I'll have to analyse this for myself at some later point.)
 

If you feel like helping me out with this January journal meme, you can leave me a comment on this post. I'm really enjoying filling this out, and the more prompts I get, the happier I am.