046: aesthetic returns
on re-consumption and memory ft. a q&a with a filmmaker
I’ve been thinking about rewatching and rereading a lot over the last few months. I think I started thinking about the question more explicitly in the summertime when my friend Kyle asked me why I rewatched things so much. This was after I’d admitted that I was going to watch The Summer I Turned Pretty for the second time and after, weeks earlier, I had watched the second season of Bridgerton about five times over, back to back (which I just might do again!). I think at the time, I explained that sometimes I felt like I missed things and had questions about plot details or felt unsatisfied about how a show ended, so I would return to see if I would experience it differently a second time. With those shows especially, returning to them was also about experiencing the same overwhelming joy and excitement I got watching them the first (or third) time.
There’s a real delight to watching things over, especially when something that you’ve watched a million times over can still surprise you. I’ve felt that with Girls, a show that feels funnier and smarter every time I watch it again. And I know that’s partly because I return to it each time with new context, but also that my familiarity with the content gives me the space to let new details in. In September, I was surprised to be surprised by The Mindy Project, a show that I have watched several times (maybe even once a year) since I was fifteen (I’m 24 now). I started rewatching it again this fall to soothe my brain, which I felt locked out of, and there were several moments that felt brand new to me, contexts and comments that I had never clocked the deeper meaning of before.
The reasoning behind returning to cultural items that we love is not really all that complex—like I've said, re-experiencing the ecstatic feelings of a show or book you loved is an undeniable comfort. It feels much rarer, however, to return to things that we felt less excited about and even rarer to return to things we were vehemently against. Once we make a negative judgment about something, it’s easy to move on from it and never think about it again. Recently, however, I’ve been thinking about how valuable it might be to go back to books and movies that have either left me incredibly annoyed or, I think even more significantly, those things I’ve had such neutral reactions towards that I might as well have never consumed them in the first place.
Part of my impulse to do so has been experiencing what feels like extreme memory loss. Let me explain what I mean. Since starting grad school, I have been daunted by how much I’ve read in the past that I cannot remember. At first, it was specifically surrounding theoretical texts that I had read through my undergraduate career, some that I felt would have significant bearing on my current studies and help me through discussions in class. I quivered and clenched as classmates easily pulled out references to Foucault or called things Cartesian. I found myself choking as my classmate referenced Kant and asked us to draw from our knowledge of his philosophy to dissect the work of another philosopher. I’ve read enough Kant and written enough assignments that required me to understand his work. At one time I understood it, if not well. But as my classmate spoke in dizzying turns, I could recall nothing. Categorical imperative? Categorically forgotten.
I began to notice having a similar experience with books I was reading for fun. I could tell you I’d enjoyed a book, I could give an overview of what had passed from the pages into my mind, but very few other details remained, even with books that captured my attention in the moment. These feelings of loss made the experience of being an avid reader feel suddenly meaningless. Sure, I had read sixty books last year but to what end? With what I could recall, I might as well have not read any. And did I even like the things that I professed to love? Is A Little Life incredible or was I just emotionally raw when I read it the first time? Could I come to love that which I had dismissed, like Zadie Smith’s Swing Time or Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love?
Last week I saw The Double Life of Veronique, a film whose dual storylines depict a series of aesthetic returns—listening to a sound collage, then visiting the place it was recorded and hearing those same sounds in real life; noticing, in a picture you took on a trip long ago, a person who looks exactly like you. In the film, these returns are clues about Veronique’s inner self, about her desires and her orientation to others around her. I saw the film with my friends, Casey and Harry. Casey and I had never seen it before, and Harry had seen it once, several years ago. I was curious about Harry’s experience watching the movie after so much time had passed, especially since he seemed unimpressed this time around. Here’s what he had to say:
On rewatching movies as a filmmaker
I don’t rewatch movies very often, but lately I’ve been trying to see movies that once had an effect on me, especially ones that hit me long enough ago that I can’t remember why they did. I’m curious to see what I can learn about myself as a person and as a filmmaker by tracking my trajectory this way, watching old milestones. I’ve had a bit of a fraud complex since getting into film school about not having seen enough movies (“and you call yourself a filmmaker!”) so I’ve felt for a long time (for better or for worse) that it’s more important to make new discoveries than revisit stuff I’ve already seen—but I think I’m getting over that. I now feel more compelled to double back and understand what has moved me and why, and see if I can learn anything new. So far it’s been rewarding.
On The Double Life of Veronique, Now and Then
I honestly don’t remember where I saw it but the feeling I’m getting is: undergrad film class. So maybe it’s more like 12-13 years. The truth is that I don’t remember why I liked it, only that I hadn’t seen a movie like it before and that it had made a big impression on me—also, the lead actress looked uncannily like someone I knew as a teenager, a feeling which vaguely adheres to the main theme of the movie.
This time around I felt a bit embarrassed. I was astonished at how lascivious the camera felt towards the lead—a real male gaze number. I wondered dubiously if that had been part of my first attraction to the film. I also found the plot to be sillier than I remembered—I recall having felt it was deeper. Something about the combination of artificially fateful encounters, handsy dads and lonesome puppeteers did not have the weight I guess it once did?? I had more memory of loving the uncanny twinning feeling that passes between Veronique and a woman who looks just like her, but this time I was fixated incredulously by her weird romance with the puppet guy. That said, I found the filmmaking—the colors, the editing, the use of sound—to still be totally enchanting and I can see why I was once blown away.
The movie has such panache and sort of effortlessly infuses poetics into its aesthetic approach. It had so many small beautiful moments. When Veronique comes towards the camera, walking within that tiny late afternoon sliver of sunlight, I felt a deft balance between storytelling (character moves from A to B) and poetics (the sun is setting, maybe it’s cold outside and the sunlight is warming, plus the sliver of light pushes the actor to the right of the frame, making them feel off balance somehow)—and that excites me. This time around, I was way more interested in the filmmaking technique than the story or its meaning.
Harry’s answers and my own concerns about why I do (or don’t) return made think of how we often return to things in moments of crisis. It might be because we want to be soothed by something familiar. Often, the desire to return to something arises when our cultural or creative identities are in question. Who was I when I liked that? Could I still be the same person who liked that? Why did I hate this and like that? I feel that way especially about Whit Stillman, whose Damsels in Distress I vehemently hated when I tried to watch it in high school but whose Metropolitan trilogy, which I watched for the first time this year, tickles my comedic sensibilities. Is Damsels in Distress as bad as it had seemed that first time? Or was I too caught up in trying to have the right opinion at the time, and so rejected anything that felt unneat? I’m thinking of rewatching the film to find out.
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