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Smultronstället

I ripped Wild Strawberries from DVD during the summer. I hate idle PCs, and there were two sitting in my room. I completely forgot about it until I woke up itching one day a year or so ago. After the usual token attempt - tossing and turning in bed, shifting around the room, pacing the wing corridors - I decided to do something. I chose Wild Strawberries. I'm glad I did.

It's one of those films you like instantly - it's almost impossible to dislike casually if you're thinking, unless you have a bone to pick with the nitty gritties of film-making. I'd heard about art films since the time I was five or six. Nana Patekar only acts in art movies. Art movies - the term signified some sort of movie in which you paced art galleries and commented on them. I know the first art movie I saw must have been Rashomon, which was fantastic, but the whole concept of a 'thinking' film only became clear to me after Wild Strawberries. With Magnolia, I wasn't sure if I like the movie itself, or the reviews I'd read, or even Tom Cruise's acting or John C. Reilly or just the post-modernist feel rather than the whole movie. With Rashomon, I was looking for too much - or maybe expecting too much - to really feel it unfolding. I kept looking for fantastic camera angles, incredible acting performances, masterpieces in the dialogue - anything to make sure that it really was a masterpiece, so that I could go on watching the film. Wild Strawberries sets that tone immediately. It feels like you know you're watching something great - even my love of subtitles, and my fear of liking movies purely for subtitles' sake, couldn't cloud the fact that I knew I was watching an art movie. A great art movie. I haven't seen too many since then - The Seventh Seal, The Man on the Train, The Colour of Paradise - but Wild Strawberries taught me to stop expecting and just watch. I'll always love the movie for that.

Comments

Batool said…
I'm wistful. You're watching movies that make you want to look for meaning. The last thing I saw was Mean Girls on my pc!
11:19 PM
decaf said…
You can take heart from knowing that I was the one you copied it from :)

No, honestly, you ought to see a few of them. You can't really compare movies and books, but they have their own charm.
11:23 PM
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