Season 3 of Twin Peaks did something interesting where it held off on reintroducing the series’ best character until the very end. This made for a unique experience where—when watching for the first time—where you’re sitting there with bated breath for them to come back the entire time, sometimes to a frustrating degree. But after it does happen and you no longer have to wait you’re like, oh ok that makes sense, everything was fine. And if you were to rewatch the whole series you wouldn’t get to have that experience again since you already know the ending, you know things are going to be fine. You only get to have that experience once⁓unless you have memory loss, in which case remember that time you
I had a similar experience with this movie. It was a bit different too, with Twin Peaks you can sort of assume that the reintroduction won’t happen for a while, but here I really had no idea there was going to be a “everything was fine” moment. While watching I was getting a little frustrated and wrote in my notes about how the last third was losing me a bit, “maybe it’s because I’m tired,” but no, “everything was fine” and it all makes sense. The “it all makes sense” moment was also latent, I experienced it only after the credits, making it much stronger and more memorable than with Twin Peaks.
While I did get frustrated while watching, I think its fine. Knowing the whole of the film means that I never get to be frustrated over it again. I think that’s comforting. Not because I won’t get frustrated in the future, but because if I were able to be frustrated over the movie again in that way, I might be able to construe it some way unfaithful to the first time. I want to embrace the emotion I’ve experienced, and because I won’t be able to watch the same movie ever again, the memory of that emotion will be constant. With every movie I hope to be reborn with new constants.
whew what a zinger, i’d also like to mention that i really liked the to sleep so as to dream reference