Keeping in the same vein of adulterous relationships I watched Brief Encounter last night. I’m finding that I am not very sympathetic to characters who differ from what I find morally right or wrong. Especially dealing with family or real life dilemmas. The more fictionalized the more I can passively watch. But, when you are putting yourself into the characters’ shoes the morality of a topic seems to really sway my opinion.

I have found that the most interesting thing in watching Criterions is listening/reading the thoughts of others. What makes one person connect to a film and another doesn’t? Always fascinating to consider how life experiences play a role in our likes and dislikes.

Perception and what leads one to see something a certain way is fascinating. In going through these films I’m interested in what connects with me and what does not.

Maybe even more surprising to me was my reaction to a film like Ikiru a couple of months back. It was not a moral contradiction like Hiroshima or Brief Encounter, but a contradiction nonetheless. Loved the film and everything Kurosawa does. However, I could not completely relate to the story because the father does not confide to his son on his illness. Family is everything in my life so this was so confounding to me that it was a hindrance in completely loving the film. I also deal with bureaucracy daily so the entire wake scene did not resonate as much with me as others because of my cynicism to gov’t agencies. Ikiru became maybe an 8.5/10 vs. 9 or 10/10.

Compare that to Tokyo Story which I had seen a few weeks prior and I connected more because it was about family. There were faults within the family, but it was a genuine story about relationships between kids and parents. It made me consider how my own 4 kids view our relationship now and imagining 40 years from now. It is a different film than Ikiru, but the family aspect was the difference in my perception of the films.