Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie?
This was one of those random chance happenings that perfectly suits the movie. I was flipping through cable tv and would often check out the documentary channel, because I like documentaries. And I remember the very first scene I saw of this movie. It was Speed standing on the Brooklyn Bridge talking about having a reciprocal love affair with a flower. I would come across this movie occasionally, but always at some mid point. It took me forever to get to watch it in its entirety. I remember trying to find a copy of it and requesting it through the library, and when it came in watching it every day that I had it checked out. I remember a friend in college had taped the audio and would listen to it over and over throughout the day on headphones.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning?
This movie should have been the one that made the director of Capote famous. It is not just a documentary of a New York City tour guide, it is also a documentary of New York. And the tour guide himself, Speed Levitch, is the most amazing tour guide you could only wish to have guide you. He is philosophical, poignant, narcissistic, wounded, intelligent, witty, sensitive, enraged, enlightened – all of the things that New York itself is.

3 What are your favorite parts?
There are so many great lines. His long rant about the grid system, his Brooklyn Bridge meditations, his version of  “But Not for Me” bleeding into Chet Baker’s, everything.

4 What do you relate to in the movie?
I love his outlook on life. “Where there is cruise, there is an escort of anticruise,” he says. The cruise to Speed is the hidden wonders that are buried in plain sight everywhere. But then, also the notion that for every silver lining there is an accompanying grey cloud. And it is our mission as cruisers to guide our fellow travelers to focus on that which is uplifting. This is the essence behind my novel, Alien Sone.

5 Who is your favorite character and why?
Well, Speed is really the only character. He suffers but he also learns and educates and explores and discovers.

6 How did this movie make you feel?
Inspired. I wanted to go to New York and get a tour. I wanted to live my life as one long bus ride. I could watch this movie over and over and still find it fresh and fascinating.


After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie?
Really accurate. As I said, I have probably watched this movie more times than any other movie.

2 How much had you forgotten?
I forgot the moment when Speed is fondling the sculpted wall of a building. He caresses it like a lover, and his face is enraptured. 

3 Do you still like this movie?
  You have to see this movie. But here is a clip that begs watching the whole film.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences?
I always wanted to figure out how long Speed talks about the grid plan. He starts talking about it when he sees a homeless person huddling under a comforter at what he later identifies as 34th and Broadway and keeps talking until he is standing in front of the Flatiron Building. According to Google Maps, this walk takes almost an hour. 

5 What is the take-away?
It is important to search for those moments and experiences hidden and tucked into the banal routine of existence that illuminate and enhance the wonder and miracle of life. The sincere pursuit of that which is real and beautiful is more important than all of the trappings of society and civilization. And most people, even the people who were fortunate enough to go on this tour, are blind to it. 

6 How do you think watching the movie impacted/ will impact your future actions if at all?
This movie is inspiring to me to seize not just the day but every moment as an opportunity to experience joy and love and mystery and magic. These are things I believe in and every time I watch it, it renews those principles. If you are open to these ideas, Speed will foster them in you. If you are closed to them, he may be like a seed in the concrete that infiltrates new life. 

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie?

I didn’t see it in the movie theater, I don’t think. It’s one of those movies that, even if you were alive and watching movies at the time it came out and you hadn’t seen it, you would absorb it through the collective unconscious, which we now call the internet. Fargo came out in the infancy of the internet, but somehow you still knew about it.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning?

I guess what I am describing above can all be called cult status. Remember movie rental stores? Am I older than anyone who would read this? Remember being able to rent VHS tapes and going back into that warren of a darkened corner somewhere that had this collection of Cult Films or Midnight Movies? And what made these films all belong to the same group despite their genre or director or any other criteria was that they spoke to some darkened corner warren of the film watcher’s soul. The content might be questionable, addressing taboos, penetrating unmentionable quandaries, or setting an eerie mood like thin gauze over a necrotic corpse. These movies left a mark, and over the course of filmmaking, they also became more mainstream. So here is Fargo, distilling a strain humanity that is depraved and depicts to what lengths the human animal will go to preserve itself.

3 What are your favorite parts?

I feel like the things that stick with the watcher are the scenes that make this movie iconic. The vast North Dakotan/Minnesotan landscape and the naïveté of the accent juxtaposed against the brutality of the actions. Steve Buscemi.

4 What do you relate to in the movie?

I am not sure that this movie is supposed to be relatable. Although it depicts the human condition, it never implicates its audience. The lines are pretty clear as to who the bad guys are (nearly everyone), and who we are supposed to route for (the pregnant cop).

5 Who is your favorite character and why?

I like the way Frances McDormand and her husband relate to each other. I feel sorry for William H. Macy, but not empathetic. In classic noir style, he is given many opportunities to undo the course of events, but he can’t see his way to them. He feels trapped, as if what he does is the only course available to him. I don’t like the ultimate bad guy, but I don’t think you are supposed to. He doesn’t even seem human. He functions emotionlessly and perfunctorily. He is not a killer with a heart of gold. Given that, he is perhaps the only person who does exactly what he is supposed to at all times. He is like the Coen Brothers’ other notorious bad guy, Anton Sigur. There is this code of behavior that must be followed and he follows it precisely. Even Frances McDormand breaks the rules of her good cop role by flirting with someone who finds her attractive.

6 How did this movie make you feel?

I think the frustration this movie makes you feel is very intentional. The sprawling white snow-laden fields are in direct opposition to the claustrophobic trapped feeling that threatens to strangle William H. Macy. Despite the fact that nothing good happens to anyone and there is a high cost for absolutely no gain, I don’t remember feeling what I might have expected: utter despair. I guess we will see what happens this time.


After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie?

Pretty accurate. There were some details like the painted mallards I had forgotten. But overall, it sticks with you.

2 How much had you forgotten?

When WHM’s wife is being kidnapped, she tries to run away and locks herself in the bathroom with a phone which is yanked out of her grips while she is trying to call the police. WHM, after he lost the deal he was trying to present to his father-in-law that would help him make some legitimate money, goes outside to his singular car in the middle of the parking lot and has to scrape his windshield. His efforts are ineffective and he reacts to his inability to remove the ice with rage. And then he calms down and applies himself again to the task.

3 Do you still like this movie?

Yes.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences?

I mentioned self-preservation before, but now I am thinking there is more to that. Self-preservation is in the movie. It motivates William H. Macy to commit the fraud for which he is trying now to cover himself. It motivates the criminals to act in the ways they do, escalating their crimes. But there is also the lady cop who is pregnant which represents the hope of new life, the way we preserve ourselves by reproduction even if we don’t understand the horrors which present themselves before us.

5 What is the take-away?

“There’s more to life than money,” FM says towards the end. Yes, but if you don’t have any money, life becomes harder. WHM saw money all around him, just none of it was flowing in his direction. The last scene of the movie seems to suggest the answer to the question as to what more there is to life if not just money. FM and her husband are lying in bed watching television, a nature channel documenting all the different kinds of life cycles, and the camera turns on them so that as the viewer watches them, they are implicitly also watching us. And the husband says to his wife, with regards to her swollen belly, “Just two more weeks.” Life is what more there is to life.

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie? 
I can’t remember the first time I saw this movie. I remember one of the last times I watched it with rigor was after a college professor used it as an example of misogyny and I was like, “Huh, what?”

2 What makes it a movie worth owning? 
I have this thing for time travel. I don’t know what it is exactly. Something about being able to control what is outside your control. The ability to jump out of chronology is sort of like immortality. You put your will over that of nature’s. But in Donnie Darko, he doesn’t time travel voluntarily, it doesn’t seem. It is his fate.
That and this movie has a killer soundtrack.

3 What are your favorite parts? 
I like when he writes the date on his arm in marker. I like Frank the rabbit. I love hating Patrick Swayze’s character. I like it when Donnie says “Hungry Hungry Hippos.”

4 What do you relate to in the movie? 
Donnie saw a pattern that no one else saw. He saw his own fate unraveling before him. He felt himself become elected. People think Donnie is crazy or dangerous or special. And maybe he is.

5 Who is your favorite character and why? 
Well, Donnie, obviously.

6 How did this movie make you feel? 
That special knowledge, special power like that of a superhero. It lends these feelings to you, if you are prone to them. There is a sense of being out of control, because Donnie is compelled to do things he doesn’t want to do. But he does want to do them.

After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie? 
What I didn’t like about this movie, that I remembered, was that the version I have is like a director’s cut sort of thing. And sometimes director’s cut is not necessarily better. I prefer the original version. I can’t say to an accurate degree what is different, but any time you feel yourself saying “this doesn’t feel necessary,” it’s probably from the director’s cut. A lot of interstitial stuff I think got put in for whatever reason.

2 How much had you forgotten? 
Jena Malone, Seth Rogen.

3 Do you still like this movie? 
I felt more saddened by it than anything. I didn’t commiserate with Donnie so much. I kind of thought he was an asshole. The teacher puts a line on the chalkboard dividing all human experience into love- or fear-based actions, and Donnie says that you can’t dichotomize things like that. There are shades of grey. I am trying to think of the other dichotomy this movie puts forth, that of science and religion.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences? 
“Did you know him?” “No.” Oh, this felt so sad. Like, this was what Donnie died for, so that this girl could live. I might be missing something, but was it worth it? I guess, if he hadn’t come back, his mother and younger sister would have also died in the plane crash. But they might anyways in the new time line.

5 What is the take-away? 
Donnie Darko moved away from fear and towards love. He was afraid of dying alone. And he probably wouldn’t have made his decision if there wasn’t at least the notion of love that motivated him. But there is no one way of doing things, or at least, it is not that obvious. And: time travel is possible.

6 How do you think watching the movie impacted/ will impact your future actions if at all? 
This is one of those pseudo-think-films where you rattle it around in your brain playing what-if scenarios in your head. But I don’t think there really are any answers in this movie. If anything, this movie gives you nothing to think about, it just presents these scenarios that chafe against each other, tantalizingly. 

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie? 
I think I saw this on cable, or … I don’t really remember. Must have been cable, or something.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning? 
There are so many great lines and I have been guilty of quoting many of them over the years. “I hid behind the car.” “Any forward gear will do, here.” “Kids did this.” “Who taught you to alphabetize?” “I’ll hit you so hard, I’ll kill your whole family.” “Smile of the week.” They may not sound like much out of context, I now realize, which is how I typically use them anyway, so whatever. Also, this cast is insane.

3 What are your favorite parts? 
I like so much about this movie. When Kevin Bacon punches out the windows in the basement at the dance. When he tips his car over. The young Mickey Rourke and his popcorn trick. Daniel Stern’s record obsession. Paul Reiser egging Steve Guttenberg on in the diner about finishing his sandwich. All the diner conversations.

4 What do you relate to in the movie? 
I love hanging out in diners. Or at least I used to. The diner in Silver Lining Playbook was my hangout when I lived in Upper Darby. Just drinking cup after cup of coffee and bullshitting with your buddies. That was me back in college. I miss that.

5 Who is your favorite character and why? 
I guess Kevin Bacon’s character. Everyone thinks of him as this loose cannon, a loser. But he is smart. He knows all the answers to the trivia questions despite his brother asking if he’s ever read a book. He tries to light his cigarette on the store display stove top and he strips down and sits in the manger when baby Jesus is stolen from the nativity scene.

6 How did this movie make you feel?
 A sense of belonging, like I was one of these guys and their problems were my problems. And there was nothing so awful that couldn’t be fixed by going to the diner.

After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie? 
Pretty accurate. This is one of my favorite movies, so I’ve seen it quite a bit.

2 How much had you forgotten? 
It’s not that I forgot it, so much as I didn’t remember until I saw it again: the scene where Steve Guttenberg’s mother chases him around the kitchen with a knife. When they go to see Seventh Seal and Guttenberg says, “What am I watching? The movie just started and I don’t even know what’s going on.”

3 Do you still like this movie? 
Absolutely.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences? 
I don't know. I still feel like the same moments got me. Like when Daniel Stern and his wife get into the argument over his records and they are just not connecting and then he's driving away in his car to "Ain't Got No Home."

5 What is the take-away? 
The sense of camaraderie and sticking with your friends as life changes. Each of the characters is going through something different (except Paul Reiser – I don’t know what his deal was), but they always had the diner.

6 How do you think watching the movie impacted/ will impact your future actions if at all? 
The kid who goes around quoting Sweet Smell of Success actually made me watch it. 

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie? 
Ummmmmmm…. I think it may have been totally at random.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning? 
I feel like I could probably watch this movie a couple more times. It is interesting, informative.

3 What are your favorite parts? 
The scr—atch-ing

4 What do you relate to in the movie? 
I always wished I could play an instrument. My first attempt was the drums. Then I dabbled on the bass guitar. When my grandfather passed, I got his ukulele and I played that for a while in college. But I never got good at any of the instruments. What I like about scratching is that it takes an apparatus that is not traditionally an instrument and it turns it into one. By manipulating the needle on the record, you can make all sorts of sounds and rhythms and beats.

5 Who is your favorite character and why? 
Probably DJ Qbert. Of all the music I got after watching this documentary, his was the first and my favorite. He uses a lot of clips from sci-fi movies. In the movie he says as a kid he had a Fischer Price record player and he used to play records backwards on it. Me too.

6 How did this movie make you feel? 
Cool. I like being introduced to new music, and this film opened up a whole new genre for me.

After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie? 
I got bored a couple times. Maybe it was just the time of night, or, I don’t know. I felt there was only so much scratching you can really listen to all at once.

2 How much had you forgotten? 
Not much.

3 Do you still like this movie? 
Yes. I liked how obsessed they became with honing their craft. DXT tells Qbert that he must have spent a lot of time indoors. And when Steve Dee taught himself the turntables, he read that if he gave up women, alcohol, everything and just focused on practicing, in a year he would be good. And that was what he did.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences? 
There is this sense of interconnectedness. Scratching takes old recorded records and cuts them up to make new pieces. A lot of the DJs talk about scratching as a language, of tapping into something extralingual (my word) that speaks beyond what is known.

5 What is the take-away? 
For me, I had always sort of ruled out rap and hip-hop music as a genre that I was interested in. But you can never rule anything out.

6 How do you think watching the movie impacted/ will impact your future actions if at all? 
I definitely got into a lot of scratching and scratch-related music like Cut Chemist, DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, Qbert, Kid Koala, Mix Master Mike, etc. How will it the future now that I’ve watched it again? TBD.

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie? 

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie? 
I saw this movie in the theater. I picked this movie to watch because smo was over and I wanted to watch something that wasn’t sad. Also, we saw one of the pieces Andy Goldsworthy makes in this documentary when we went to the Storm King sculpture park.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning? 
a.) it is beautiful, b.) it is about art in nature, c.) it is one of those movies that you can either watch intensely or just have on in the background.

3 What are your favorite parts? 
Andy Goldsworthy uses natural elements to make his art and lets nature take its course over them. His ice sculptures melt and his stone cairns are drowned. The wind carries away snow and leaves and the river washes out his natural pigment. He spends hours meticulously forming perfect images, only to have them be transformed into something else. And that is the nature of his art. He doesn’t view it as destruction because he does not own the art pieces. He enters into a dialogue where he shapes something, he puts his will upon the terrain and then lets the terrain continue on without him. He also documents his work with photographs, so at least there is some commemoration of his work that we as absent viewers can experience. / The very last scene where he throws handfuls of snow, almost childlike, and creates phantoms.

4 What do you relate to in the movie? 
I like the cyclical nature of his art, his philosophy and the poetry of his explanations. His pictures always struck me when I would see them in books, but watching him at work is different. And then seeing his art in person is yet another dimension. When I went to Storm King, I didn’t feel it was wrong to take one of the stones from his rock wall. I was acting like the tide or wind. I was incorporating myself, adding myself by subtracting the rock. I think he would approve.

5 Who is your favorite character and why? 
The river, obviously. No, the tide. Just kidding, it’s actually the river.

6 How did this movie make you feel? 
Contemplative, integrated, peaceful, inspired. When smo and I put the movie in, I cued it up and the first image appeared on the screen. It was a solitary rock cairn in a desolate, snowy landscape. I paused it as we settled ourselves in, and then we continued to not watch any of the movie.

After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie? 
Pretty accurate. I’ve probably seen this movie six or seven times now.

2 How much had you forgotten? 
Nothing, really. Memory is like the tide. It takes away and brings back. At times, when you are not thinking about it, it is gone forever, seemingly. But then some small thing might trigger the memory, and it will come flooding back.

3 Do you still like this movie? 
Yes.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences? 
The connection to Pi, with its patterns and circles.

5 What is the take-away? 
Life is a circle. We are inhabitants on an Earth that doesn’t need us, we need it. There are cycles and time inevitably moves forward. This isn’t an environmental movie, but it shows the connection to the earth and the way in which all things are connected from birth to death, change and growth. “The real work is the change.”

6 How do you think watching the movie impacted/ will impact your future actions if at all? 
I think it always inspires me to make things, which is something I’m not very good at. But what AG is good at is taking painstaking effort to make things appear effortless. I like how he made needles from nature and paint from rocks. He had $0 overhead because he found everything right where he made his art.

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie? 
I saw it in a repertory theater. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this movie outside the theater. Sometimes when you watch a movie on the small screen, it makes less of an impact. We will see.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning? 
I probably liked that it was about a clown, more or less. Another movie that takes place in a circus I might like to own is The Unknown starring Lon Chaney.

3 What are your favorite parts? 
I only have the image of the clown. I remember she gets bought from her poor family and travels the road under the guard of a strongman.

4 What do you relate to in the movie? 
I’m not sure.

5 Who is your favorite character and why? 
I forget her character’s name, but Federico Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina, plays the clown with perfection rivaling Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton for physical comedy and facial expressions.

6 How did this movie make you feel? 
Whimsical.

After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie? 
I had forgotten what happens in the movie, how it ends. What happens to the characters, their journey.

2 How much had you forgotten? 
I forgot its sadness. The way that the clown sacrifices herself for the strongman and what ends up happening to her.

3 Do you still like this movie? 
Yes.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences? 
I had a lot of thoughts and feelings. I thought about the way the clown and the strongman had their own lives, they were trying to survive in their own ways that seemed to be mutually exclusive despite that they were supposed to be working together. And but how they needed each other and how the stronger person was the clown who realized that and sacrificed herself. And even though what happened to her happened, and what happened to the strongman happened, she still had a richer existence for giving of herself.

5 What is the take-away? 
The strongman girded himself against the world. He filled himself up with machismo and this superficial strength. But he was very sad and he never let himself need anyone. “I don’t want no friends. I don’t need anyone. I want to be alone,” he says towards the end of the movie. “I’ll leave you to your fate, then,” the person he’s talking to says. He has doomed himself because he hasn’t opened himself up to be hurt, to be loved.

6 How do you think watching the movie impacted/ will impact your future actions if at all? 
Everything has a purpose, the clown learns. Every pebble has a place in the grand scheme. And you and me.

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie? 
I think this was about the time that I was just going to the library and systematically going through the documentary section. I like documentaries, especially ones about odd people who obsess over normal things (e.g.: King of Kong, Word Wars, Cinemania, etc.). But this movie isn’t like that.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning? 
I think I was overwhelmed by the fresh style, just an onslaught of images and information.

3 What are your favorite parts? 
I specifically remember the documentarian filming himself lip-sinking to Marianne Faithful./  (from after) Jonathan has a dream he finds his father and his father says “I didn’t know you existed.” This moment really hit me. At the same time Low sings: “I fell down the stairs. I wished I were dead.”

4 What do you relate to in the movie? 
I have a strange affinity for homosexual narratives. I am not homosexual, but their struggle for identity and acceptance is one I can relate to. They have been outsiders and forbidden to express a natural human emotion. I suppose we all have a story in which we come to terms with our sexuality, however it may manifest itself. And I suppose the majority, or what used to be considered the majority, sort of just fall into social norms without question. But I know I struggled./ This search for self identity is echoed in the mother’s descent into mental illness and the loss of herself.

5 Who is your favorite character and why? 
I only remember the subject and filmmaker of this movie. I am not sure if he is my favorite character. I think his mother had some mental instability and he cared for her. But on the other hand, I seem to remember him being kind of self-indulgent.

6 How did this movie make you feel? 
I think it made me feel inspired because he created this lovely movie out of his own effort and the tools at his disposal.

After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie? 
Well, it was much more focused on the mother, which I only remembered as I started answering these questions. Or at least it was supposedly focused on the mother. But of course it is his story.

2 How much had you forgotten?  
A lot of the details. I don’t think there was any one thing, specifically.

3 Do you still like this movie? 
I think so. I felt drawn into it even if it was at times drawn out.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences? 
It was mesmerizing. I could feel myself staring into the screen, losing myself, like his mother lost herself to the shock treatments and like he lost his self to depersonalization. I could sense my self becoming folded in, like I was one part of a many-faceted organism. There was so much happening, and not just stylistically. There were the fucked-up grandparents and the fucked-up mom and the fucked-up kid, and how do they survive? How do they get through it? Well, they don’t.

5 What is the take-away? 
Something about family and protecting something. Renee would have never become mentally ill and eventually brain damaged if her parents had not given her shock treatments – and what for? There had never been anything wrong with her in the first place. They invented this horror. And then they just sort of sat back and watched it unfold. The grandparents are these horrible figures, completely lifeless and irreal. Anyways. The takeaway is to find your own path, maybe. If you are oppressed, to get out from under it. If you are miserable, to create alternatives. If you are victimized, to continue hoping.

6 How do you think watching the movie impacted/ will impact your future actions if at all?
I write stories to get around some awful feelings. To re-author my life. I don’t think this movie taught me that. But it encourages me to continue. This movie is mesmerizing and effective. It mines the shit and the horror and everything that ever went wrong and it makes art, it makes coping mechanisms, it makes beauty.

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie? 
I heard of this movie while I was doing the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die project. There are probably about a dozen of these movies that I was introduced to that way.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning? 
That is what I am hoping to find out. Because, according to my memory, there doesn’t seem much that would make me want to keep it. I may have been impulsive. Or maybe there is something I am forgetting. It may have been remarkable. But a lot of other movies that I watched around this time stand out much more strongly that I don’t own. Such as Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket.

3 What are your favorite parts? 
The only thing I remember is that it starts out with Harry Dean Stanton walking through the desert, refusing to talk./ (from after) I liked the part when he becomes the rich father and he walks his estranged son home from across the street and the son copies the way he walks.

4 What do you relate to in the movie? 
I’ll have to answer this after the movie./ One of my interests is elective mutism. I used to spend days without talking to anyone. I think there were definitely things in this movie I could relate to. I’m not sure if I feel like delving into them.

5 Who is your favorite character and why? 
I only remember Harry Dean Stanton. I know someone picks him up (I think it is Dean Stockwell, which is funny because I always get their names mixed up) and he looks for his estranged wife who might be working at a strip club?

6 How did this movie make you feel? 
I’m guessing sad. And alone. Probably a lot of the movies I decided to keep made me feel that way at the time. Like, less alone in my solitude because of camaraderie with lonely characters in a movie, which reinstated my irl aloneness.

After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie? 
Well, they were accurate in that I didn’t remember much of it. I had the basic idea, but not the scope or depth.

2 How much had you forgotten? 
I forgot the emotions, the long empty roads. I felt a much closer kinship or affinity for the son this time around. Here is this boy who has been abandoned by his parents and adopted by extended family. And then suddenly his father reappears and wants to be in his life and reconnect him to his mother. There is a connection there. No matter how fucked up your parents may be, you still expect them to be better people than you are, to have their shit more together. You expect them to be wiser, to be able to help you. And sometimes they can’t or aren’t.

3 Do you still like this movie? 
Oh, it’s sad. I think it is sadder than when I first watched it even.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences? 
After he tells his lost love their story and reminds her of himself, she looks through the one-way mirror, and he looks back, his face superimposed over her face. He says, “If you turn the light off, will you see me?” And she says, “I don’t know. I never tried.” This moment is both simple and profound. “Do you see me?” he says. “Do you recognize me?”

5 What is the take-away? 
There is this promise, of movies, of life, that it will all work out. And sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it comes close, and the only way to make it work out to any degree is by sacrificing your share of it.

6 How do you think watching the movie impacted/ will impact your future actions if at all? 
It probably didn’t affect what happened to me, but in retrospect it feels very informative about certain decisions about the quality of life and choosing with whom to spend one’s life.