“Completely understand”? That’s a tall order; most films are made to be digestible in the first viewing because being too complex can lose your audience. That said, here are a few movies I think get better the more you watch them. On the first viewing, you’ll probably catch all the major themes, but on subsequent views, you’ll pick up more nuance, subtext, themes, and more.
- Let’s start with one almost everyone agrees with: INCEPTION
Inception’s main plot is pretty straight forward, but because the nature of that plot is invading dreams and going into deeper and deeper layers of dreams, you can end up getting a little lost. (Kind of the point, honestly, and puns semi-intended.)
But the more you watch this film and its ambiguous ending, the more you’ll understand and the more you’ll want to go through it again to see if you missed anything else. This is a movie about dreams, so a lot of Christopher Nolan’s writing, cinematography, and effects have the potential for double meanings, symbolism, and interpretation.
At the end of the day, the first viewing is good, but more subsequent views will help flesh it out as well as bring more questions.
- Now for a classic: TOTAL RECALL
I love this film, and part of the reason why is because Paul Verhoven PURPOSEFULLY wanted to mess with the audience and make them doubt what was real and what was a dream, so he seeded the script, acting, and cinematography with evidence for both. When you watch this film the first time, it presents itself as a thriller with a feel-good ending, but you may feel a little hesitant to go with it. That’s by design: the more you watch the film the harder and harder it gets to rationalize the big win at the end. You’ll start to question if poor ol’ Doug Quaid had his mind fried in a chair at Rekall, because that would seem to make more sense than what we see play out in front of us.
And the best part: if you go one way or the other, you are right. That was the exactly the director’s intention, and each time you watch the film, you may feel differently and still be correct.
That’s some damn good sci-fi!
- Let’s get into some personal favorites: DARK CITY
I LOVE this film, I love its soundtrack, I love its visual design, and I will die on this hill when I say, “if this movie hadn’t come out when it did, X-Men would never have worked.” Music from this film was used in the X-Men trailer and Dark City has a ‘psychic fight’ at the end of the film that I support as being “proof of concept” that the filming techniques and special effects were ready to roll on ‘super hero’ scale projects.
BUT! What really drove this film was a set of questions about where ‘humanity’ resides: how do we find it, how is it built, how is it destroyed, and how much of our memories affect who were are.
The more you watch the film, the more you will think about these themes afterwards, and the more you’ll want to dive back in after you’ve reconsidered. The movie does a great job playing with our conceptions, using symbolism and analogies for depression and mental illness, as well as friendship, love, compassion and self-sacrifice. There is HUGE story behind the story we see and it’ll mess with your head. If you’re anything like me, I think some of the best stories are the ones NOT fully told, because you’ll want to write it yourself in your brain. At the same time, you’ll also go back to the source material to try to find more answers and solutions regarding the story you tell yourself.
There is a long history with The Strangers and Dr. Schreber. I can guarantee you won’t end the movie feeling like you knew enough about this character and why he takes the actions he does. You’ll know all the basics from the film; (he explains himself to John), but it’s a highlight reel flashback that gives you what you need to form a picture, but curiosity will make you want to know the rest.
HONORABLE MENTION:
- THE FOUNTAIN
I have to list this one because I don’t think a lot of people saw it, but I was a huge fan of Hugh Jackman after X-Men, and I dragged my girlfriend at the time to see it based on the lunacy I saw in the trailer. The trailer made this look like some crazy, epic sci-fi mind bender.
Well, it IS a mind bender, but it’s not a straight-forward movie. On purpose.
It was written and filmed by Darren Aronofsky, who was very influenced by “2001: A Space Odyssey” and other, more esoteric films that emphasize symbolism and theme over coherent, linear structure. In his words,
"It's very much like a Rubik's cube, where you can solve it in several different ways, but ultimately there's only one solution at the end,"
This one gets an honorable mention because the three intertwined stories share the same themes and work together to make a (slightly disturbing) whole. But you’ll never completely understand it because it’s not written to be something that is completely coherent. Like I said, it’s more like a fever dream you wake up out of and know that there was an emotional through-line but that’s the only real thing you remember as the details start to drift away.
DISHONORABLE MENTIONS
- THE LAST JEDI
This is one of the only movies in my life I wanted to walk out of, and it does so much to try to destroy George Lucas’ Star Wars setting, characters, and former plots that I actually did need to watch it more than once to fully understand how deep that damage was going. It cost me my soul.
I’m mostly kidding, but I’ll never watch a Kennedy-driven Star Wars project again, and I lost a lot of respect for Rian Johnson, who had a string of movies I still really like. (Brick, The Brothers Bloom, & Looper; everything after that? Not so much.)
There are people out there who defend this movie, and frankly, you’re entitled your opinion. But it’s undeniable that this movie purposefully retcons every character, (even the newest ones, like Hux and Phasma) even if that retcon is poorly justified and makes zero sense in light of what we knew about the overall plot, setting, and characters from Lucas’ body of work. It’s a film that tries to be smart by using the heavy hand of post-modernism, but rebuilds nothing and ends with only point: to destroy everything it touched.
The Force Awakens started that journey, but The Last Jedi went so much further that I stopped watching any new projects. Having run a Youtube channel for SWTOR, I’ve seen so many good writers who ‘get it’ when it comes to Star Wars that there was no excuse.