Films. I'd been tagged to list 10 of which, more or less, most effected me. Not favorites, so many later-seen flicks like Film Blu or The Straight Story won't be considered. Because as most expressive forms, a little less than some, timing counts.
Most effected... effects that can arrive from beyond any film's narrative or from within, pieces depending on the moment that slide in more than they might in a different moment, like the pleasure from a wine in a specific context. Change the glass, the food, the place, what you ate the day before... and its flavor, and memory of the same, changes. Anyway.
Movies that effected me the most then, as in back then, 10 of them. It's impossible to say what things effected you the most, and how - it changes as you change, rather they, the effects, and happen almost entirely outside of awareness, complexities long before you... swallow a sip of wine. Anyway 2.
So there'll be something of a chronology. And in such..there's always a consideration of aspects of you that changed or others that basically didn't, style you can call it. So, if you have a top ten list, list one of them, I hope, in the comments below. Though less indicative than music, still it's information of a kind. Anyway 3.
My first, from a happy childhood: 1: The Red Balloon (Le Ballon Rouge). Sentimental - though that reflects, maybe, other flavors - and this is already way too long.
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...leaving aside any explanations, Number 2 of ten, 10 films that effected me the most back then. Yes: Star Wars.
..if you have a top 10 movie list, I'd love to hear it in the comments....
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Film 3: La Strada, Fellini. There's a likely a context there as well, much....probably obvious but some... personal. Quinn and his usual graphic novel mug work fine, as his over-acting held a little in check by the nature of the story, filming, cinematograph-ics, and what remains is appropriate to his character. But Giulietta Masina... was extraordinary, coming out of the screen into your living room. Story, within tone. Not so far away from 'a long time ago'....Anyway 2...
I probably couldn't have said then why the movie effected me so. Probably still can't....
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Number 4 of 10 films that effected me most back then... the first in elementary, the second in first middle school, the 2nd in 2nd middle school, a film per building. But as... approaches adolescence, the passing time turns more intense, pressure building to conform to tonic rhymes, or non-conform to leave other rimes, belief in words, absolute, unless the same remains a confute, internal or external, fear hones in, unaware, societal norms dim, their role to inhibit expressions dangerous, to delineate and motivate specific pleasures-orous... yadda yadda. Anyway.
I would bend the rules for the 4th and use not a film but a TV series stumbled upon, Cosmos, maybe for the music, maybe for Sagan's warm-tea or hot-cider and sugar-coated doughnut on a cool November day billion voice, the kind of voice that doesn't give words as words because, if you're of that sort, you already know that words don't even come close to describing the stuff there, or here. Still, rules are rules, rhymes aren't rimes, so a film. With Vangelis none the less (as cosmos): 4 - Blade Runner
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Number 5
It changes, of course, the way you watch films, the rituals before and after, even during. The first three I was either taken to or were shown in familiar rooms, the before and after innocent. then you start to drive, go with someone with whom you have different synchronies. Alcohol (always was a wine drinker though, mostly.) Thematics, and what you do, come into play.
The 4th, Blade Runner, came out at about that adolescent age when you ask the usual questions, like why is there anything when nothing seems so much more intuitive, is there anything, if there is, what distinguishes it, ecc. A little like the rhetoric in Blade Runner, though the movie offers more.... wine, than food. Life. Memory. Love. Living. P. Dick's book is a bit more honest that way. More food than wine. But doesn't come with... music. Not even in his rhythms. Anyway.
So...film 5. Well, before getting to a couple... bad films, if 'effect' is expanded to include the notion of pleasure over time: Breaking Away.
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Number 6
The last, Breaking Away, was a bit of an indulgence. Films like , say, Casablanca (somewhere I really do have a white smoking jacket and butterfly ties that I've forgotten long since how to tie, much of the script memorized over time,) that you've seen repeatedly and basically always with pleasure. Which is, after all, an effect. Anyway.
High School slowly moves, Solon mine was called, time changing itself, or representations of the same, like most things, articulations of taste, music, food, language, clothes, hair, what you might do or won't do, even though sometimes style remains. Number 6, Brainstorm, probably couldn't be called a good film. But I remember seeing it with a friend, the drink and talk after - its direction was satisfying, its flavor, where in some way I figured I'd be heading. Anyway 2: film 6, Brainstorm
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Number 7: In a minute - its almost embarrassing. Almost.
....since this is the seventh, a quick reflection on aspects emerging from the majority, which might have been more...listened to, so to speak, and when. Or not. In general, even in childhood, actually more, the stuff below the stories seems to be... relevant. Characters themselves count for little effect. Love and belonging pop up quickly. And a certain... gentleness.
...so most of the stories themselves are removed, as the language, cinematic, de-emphasizing the usual. Music seems to be pretty influential as well, increasingly so - likely because it often acts as a meta-language, a way to communicate stuff beneath. Not simply emotion or sentiment but connection, synchrony. Limerent. Repeating...most elements of story in themselves, realism that actually isn't, didn't hold much weight for me. They still don't. Anyway.
...keeping that in mind, and Giorgio Moroder's decadent, fat score - still analog, just before everything went digital - and Jennifer Beals' black Venus appearance (at least for a 16 year old midwestern heterosexual rigorous male and bike rider to boot) on screen, being honest: another bad movie, number 7: Flashdance.
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Number 8: I didn't realize the relevant images were to be posted without comment (without which... I don't think I would find 10 films with, in themselves, enough personal effect to post.) So, without comment: from the 80's - Ran (Kurasawa)
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...Number 9 of the 10 films that effected you the most, without comment, for the 90's: Trust (Hal Hartley)
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...which, partially, wasn't particularly distant from how things sort of worked out, personally. Anyway. Summary.
...movies. Effects. Emotions. Plots. Sub-plots. Meanings. Forms. Music. Silences. Stories. Characters. Subjects. Genres. Most of the preceding have an 's' at their end. They're plural. Music instead has a plurality already within its notion, its expression. A meta-thing, borrowing from a friend. That meta....
...maybe I should jot down a note or two instead of letting my fingers dance-ish across the letters of this old apple keyboard finding their own way. But I'm not sure. It's one of those things about gesture and rhythm and rhythms as they emerge... you never really can rely on procedure, even on notes jotted down, to allow enough space. (How un-german a line.) It's not a digression, not really, these lines. It's one of those things about trying to figure out or recall 10 movies that effected you most, with or without any comments, any procedure, and even without a chronology as I instead followed on this list: at its end information has emerged that very unlikely you might have expected before. Music, in a way, or of a kind. An aspect of.
...back to anyway, summary, life imitating art - well. Not really. It's not such a well-defined line delineating the two. 10 movies, mostly from a good time ago, of course. I'm old. Let's see...6 american. One basically without dialogue. Only 3 scifi, a bit of a surprise. (Desire exceeds.) Love stories might be the dominant type. And a lightness overall. Art imitating life.
...well, in effect. Family in all of them but one, (that singular 'Breaking Away' is an indulgence on the list, representative of those sorts with a whisker more like Casablanca. But it could have been Princess Bride, a Gilliam or Tornatore flick, ecc., depending on the moment,) are absent, inhibitive or very problematic. Well well. That came to mind yesterday, in truth, unpleasantly. Sigh. The way we create stories, process information, to defend effect, to defend emotional expressions in the now, the here-then singular while all its representations float on, following their own...music, sometimes you can hear those partitures later, in a different score, even a list of movies. I would connect a thing or two, myth, the requirement of dis-connection not only a la Joseph Campbell but in life without the myth (ie. would Faraday have been Faraday if his father hadn't died or would that different tonic kept him sewing books or something else respectable, or...) ...I wax.
...where and when I should instead wane instead of... wain-ing. And nominate...well, basically anyone. List those 10 movies one at a time, the ones that effected you the most, and look at the end for patterns to emerge... they will. They always do. It's one of the things we're motivated toward. To infer. Where things fit, where we fit. Where we belong. To remain.
Red Balloon 1:
Star Wars 2:
3. La Strada -
4 - Blade Runner
5. Breaking Away
6. Brainstorm
7. Flashdance
8. Ran
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