I came into watching Citizen Kane with high expectations. Not only has the movie been praised by almost every film critic in existence, it has also been ranked consistently as one of the greatest movies of all time. A movie that redefined what movies could be, in their plots, cinematography, and themes. The movie was incredibly slow, slower than I would have expected even for an older movie. This can probably be attributed to the fact that a summary of Kane’s life is given at the beginning of the movie so when the rest of the movie is just telling the story of the major events in Kane’s life, I already knew how the situations were going to play out. It made the scenes incredibly slow, with each one devolving into me just waiting for the conclusion of each scene to match what was already said at the beginning. This made the movie terribly hard to watch for me as it felt excruciatingly long.
After the movie ended I felt it did not live up to my expectations of what it would be, it was not what I expected. After a few hours had passed since the movie had ended, I had time to reflect on its themes, how a man transformed in front of my eyes, from someone who means well, a genuinely good human being, to someone that was despised by everyone around him. This is all culminated in his saying of “Rosebud” when his second wife left him and moments before his death. “Rosebud” which was the name of sled that was taken from him long ago when he was child living in rural Colorado. It reminded him of a simpler time, a time where he didn’t have wealth or responsibility, and was just a child. It reminded him of the life he lost by gaining everything most people want in their life at such a young age. It eventually turned him into a recluse in old age after he had lost everyone and everything he had loved.
This is exactly what a great movie does, it forces you to reflect and think about what happened in the movie long after the final credits have passed, and while great movies can also provide great viewing experiences, not all of them must. This movie forced me to consider its themes and examine this man’s life even after I had a negative viewing experience. It is a great movie for this fact, and one that I will keep in mind later when watching older movies.
I didn’t feel the same way about the viewing experience, and one of the things that made the constant rehashing of Kane’s life story interesting to me was that it was all told from different perspectives; so many people got to pitch in on who Kane was except for Kane. (Obviously that’s because he’s dead, but it’s interesting to think about who writes a person’s life story.)
I think it’s interesting that you found the repeated retelling of Kane’s life to be drawn out. If I hadn’t watched the film myself, I would probably agree. Certainly on paper it makes sense how it could easily end up that way. However, I’m trying to figure out why I don’t end up agreeing, and I think it’s because each story focuses on a different part of his life. The first is his childhood, then his early newspaper career, and so on. All of this is of course subsumed by the totality of the opening mock headline reel, but even so, I think that together it helps create the theme of the story. Wonderful analysis, though!