When we think of movies and “reboots,” we think of taking old franchises, and polishing them off into something new for a younger generation, and hoping to tap into the nostalgia of the original audience for the material, as well. But, I think there’s another type of reboot that cinema can provide, and it’s a more personal one. Actually, I would say it is more of a recharge. Like with music, I think movies can jumpstart us if we’re feeling burned out and stressed out. What movies do that depends on the individual, but I believe it can be whatever our mind needs in the moment to recalibrate, and refocus.
In 1997, my obsession and love of films was still, relatively, in its infancy. But I was getting burned out. Actually, I was getting bored. The movies that were coming out were not really doing anything for me, and I was still figuring out how to watch older movies. I worried that, as I was starting to look at movies more critically, I was forgetting to enjoy watching them. In June, Simon West’s “Con Air” pulled me out of my slump. I loved that film’s absolute insanity, and John Woo’s “Face/Off” at the end of the month hit me like a freight train with the emotional connection I made with that film. From that point on, my journey to where I am now continued, and I realized that it was just the stretch of films I was watching- not watching films in general- that I was a bit bored with.
In 2006, I was coming up to a crossroads that I’ve written about several times. Emotionally, I was a mess, and in terms of what I wanted to do with my life, I was feeling adrift. I’d been at the theatre for five years, but I was also coming off of a pretty successful run as a composer. Sonic Cinema was two years old, and I was enjoying writing about films, but I also felt like I wasn’t quite on the direction I should have been in my life. Some reviews took me forever to sit down and write, and I just wasn’t sure whether I wanted to continue. It was around this time, though, that I watched Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain”, and coming off of some of the other films of that time- including Terry Gilliam’s “Tideland”– I suddenly found myself excited about writing about movies again. It was also around this time that I received my first screener request, opening me up to a new way of seeking out films to watch. Once again, I felt rejuvenated, and it helped in getting me through a tumultuous year or two ahead.
In January of 2020, I had a profound level of stress on my shoulders. My mother’s mental condition had deteriorated significantly over the holidays, and between that and a seemingly overwhelming schedule at work, as well as keeping up with Sonic Cinema, there were some painful emotional choices that needed to be made. In my moviewatching, Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” and Pedro Almodovar’s “Pain and Glory” were among the films that really resonated with me. Malick’s film is about a man who made one of the strongest statements against the Nazis in WWII by refusing to fight for them, and he stayed with his convictions until the day he died in prison; considering the emotional weight of the choices I was up against at the time, that really connected with me in a way Malick’s films hadn’t before. With Almodovar’s film, I think it was the life and introspection of Antonio Banderas’s performance as an aging film director, who reflected on a work he spent years questioning, on a life choice that haunted him, that really gave me newfound life at that moment, and made me feel alive again.
Last night, I did a double feature of Errol Morris’s “Vernon, Florida” and Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life”. I was revisiting Linklater’s film for an upcoming podcast record, but it’s the main inspiration behind this blog, as well. Since I first saw it in 2001, “Waking Life” has been one of my favorite films, and it’s one of my “go-to” films if I feel like I need and intellectual reset because I’m burned out or stressed. It is a film about ideas set within the dream world of its main character (Wiley Wiggins), who just cannot seem to wake up. Animated using the rotoscope process on Macs, it’s a strikingly beautiful merger of concepts, scored by Grover Gill in an idiosyncratic way that brings the right personality to the film, and has long been one of my favorite albums to just listen to if I want to relax. Last night, when I was watching, the structure of the film seemed to really snap into place for me for the first time. Not every vignette works for me, but the ones that do, and the collective experience, is one I cherish every time I go back to the film and watch it again. I always find myself refreshed afterwards, I look forward to talking about it this coming week for the Film for Thought Podcast.
This was the first time I had watched “Vernon, Florida” since I reviewed it back in 2017. It proved to be a wonderful choice to pair with “Waking Life”, and not just because of its 55 minute running time. Morris’s second feature is an interview documentary about the small, one light town of Vernon, Florida, and when I watched it in ’17, it got me thinking of my hometown of Ravenna, Ohio, which was certainly not as small as Vernon, but felt like a little out-of-the-way town, at least the part of town we lived in. On the surface, these films don’t have a lot in common, but Morris’s perceptive eye for subjects, and just allowing them to speak, and share of them, makes them feel like kindred spirits. His first film, “Gates of Heaven”, is more profound, and probably more in keeping with the philosophical spirit of “Waking Life”, but taking in the grounded humanity of “Vernon, Florida” before the imaginative theory of “Waking Life” was just what the doctor ordered last night.
What are your favorite movies to watch when you need a recharge? They don’t have to be as challenging as “Waking Life” or “A Hidden Life”; they just have to be a movie that you watch when you need some equilibrium in life. Leave them in the comments below.
Viva La Resistance!
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
Sonic Cinema Movie Chat on Twitch
