Life's Simple Pleasures - Part 2: Films

I suppose my love of the arts is primarily reflected in my devotion to books and films.  Growing up in Zhoushan, my memories of film-watching were always associated with class trips to one of the three movie theatres in town, and only a few films from that era remain in my recollection.

After arriving in the US, as my English began to improve, my interest in films also perked up.  Other than the Hollywood mega productions that I watched with friends and family, often at one of the two movie theatres near Time Square, I had the opportunity to watch quite a few independent productions at the cinema near Lincoln Center and in the Chelsea area of Manhattan.

When I first began this blog, I wanted to catalog all the films I have come to watch either on DVD or in theatres, however that task had been abandoned along with my blog, but looking at the list on the left side of my blog, it is certainly quite eclectic in genre and taste.  There aren't too many that I would call classics or favorites, but I suppose real classics only come every so often.

Recently a good friend lent me a book on films written (somewhat ironically) by someone who is a finance professional, a good number of classics are mentioned in this collection of his essays, from the incomparable Godfather series to the two legendary Star Wars trilogies, from one of my all time favorites - Casablanca, to the cult classics such as Pulp Fiction.

Yet what had stirred my memory was the mention of Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation.  I don't quite recall who introduced me to that film when it was first screened at the Lincoln Center cinema, but I immediately felt a particularly strong connection to this story.  At the time I had yet been to Tokyo, but there was the subtle undercurrents of the story somehow managed to grab my heartstrings.

Not long after the DVD release of this film, I went on a 9-week trip to Tokyo, and naturally I watched the film again in my hotel room (with a few other movie-loving colleagues), and we managed to visit many of the places around Tokyo that was seen in the film, not the least of all the New York Bar atop the Tokyo Park Hyatt which was featured prominently in the film.  

I suppose to some extent, it isn't too hard for someone like myself who had to deal with being thrust into a new culture at a young age, to relate to the cultural undertones that are often "lost in translation," but even more so than this superficial layer, I suppose oftentimes in life we are faced with a sense of being "lost in translation" that renders us utterly hopeless or helpless, at least for a time.

So the attractiveness of a good film lies not in what megastars the film happens to feature, or what special effects the director employs, but rather how easily one's heartstrings can be tugged, and how much of an impact it has on the audience, reaching into the depth of one's soul.

Some of my all time favorites to this day, separately in Foreign/English and Chinese, in no particular order, are:

Foreign/English

• My Fair Lady
• Casablanca
• Amelie
• Lost in Translation
• The English Patient
• Kill Bill
• Definitely, Maybe
• My Blueberry Nights

Chinese

• 玻璃之城
• 非诚勿扰 2
• 生日快乐
• 伤城
• 重庆森林
• 不再让你孤单
• 霸王别姬
• 活着

 

Comments

[拼体育]

awesome!