Introduction: A Guide to Cinema

The Worst Hangover

I am twenty-four and sitting in the room I grew up in, which can only mean two things: I love my parents too much to leave, or I'm not making enough to make it on my own.

While I do love my parents a great deal and I thank them for accommodating me in this twenty-first century economy, the nest that I refuse to leave is also the one I've built for myself. I'm not "making it on my own" because of two reasons:

1. I don't know what "it" is I should make.
2. Whatever it is, I don't want to do it (or even start it) on my own.

What went wrong? Why didn't I, like my peers, find a singular passion in college that would give me the impetus to saddle my horses and explore the frontier? Why, when faced with uncertainty, do I flounder on the shore waiting for the tide to swoop me back into the cool, easy water, rather than evolve a pair of legs and rough it on the hot, hard land?

I worked hard to broaden my repertoire and hone my rhetoric, but I never took on the challenges that would steer me away from the intellectual joy ride and onto the coarse, uneven road towards a purpose. College for me was like sampling every drink on the menu—the variety was a thrill, but I ended up waking up with the worst hangover.

Not only did my "binge learning" leave me disoriented, it also—to continue using the metaphor of alcohol—left a huge black-out where the knowledge should be. Sure, I might remember a rough and incomplete outline of an author's theory or of a particular time period, but without a clear and memorable imprint, the names and dates become interchangeable and therefore useless.

To truly graduate from adolescence, I propose that I must regather what I learned, place it into the context of the world I know, and then ask myself the perennial question: "So what?" Only then will I know what "it" is I should make, and only then will I have the confidence to take the first steps forward.

A Return to Cinema

My college major was Film and Media Studies, which included, among other things, watching and writing about films and critiquing the industries that produce them. I certainly watched a great deal of films (many I would never have seen otherwise) and analyzed them to my professors' specifications. I even caught glimpses of the conglomerated media machine and discovered in it several major, creativity-stunting flaws. But the methods by which I demonstrated and applied my knowledge, namely papers and exams, were just that—methods. I didn't particularly care for the stances I took; as long as I could adequately prove them, I would be all the more close to graduating (with a degree, of course; not a direction). Without that conviction, the knowledge went in one ear, stayed for the duration of the academic quarter, then promptly exited out the other.

I am returning to cinema, as opposed to finding something else to pursue, because I deeply regret the shallow, disinterested treatment that I gave it. I gave up becoming a filmmaker by the end of freshman year, but I was always enamored by the passion of the film theorists (several of them filmmakers), the Bazins and the Eisensteins. I thought, maybe with a little more resolve and a lot less distractions, I could aspire to follow on their footsteps, to reintroduce and reinterpret film to a whole new generation. I certainly didn't lack the intellectual capacity, but my mind was nonetheless only "half there"—present to complete the assignment but out the door once I had finished it. I had other concerns, some academic and some utter nonsense, to contend with; I would not give cinema the attention I knew it deserved of me.

The Plan

This blog will serve as a personal journal of my rediscovery of cinema. It, like it's author, will be far from perfect, but I hope that, should you choose to follow along, it will serve, as its title suggests, as a guide to cinema as told through the lens of a lowly and undeserving cinephile. Having retained my sanity, I do not intend to cover the entirety of cinema, but I do hope to focus on the following areas:

• Studying the works of film theorists (and not just ones of the dead white European males) in order to define what "cinema" means to me and why it matters
• Exploring the "great films" and articulating (to the best of my ability) what makes them so great
• Analyzing the process of canonization, that is, the selection of "great films," and critiquing the canons of today

I will update this blog consistently—that is, any time I feel like it. Its format, style, and quality will undoubtedly change as I become more comfortable with sharing my thoughts and more confident in those thoughts. I offer no promises, other than the possibility of learning something new and perhaps enjoying the ride.

The First Step

One can read about fishing, or one can fish. I will begin my journey by watching the first film that was assigned to me in school: Orson Welles's seminal masterpiece (I do not use the term sparingly), Citizen Kane (1941). The film has secured number-one spots on countless "best-of" lists, including AFI's pretigious 100 Years...100 Movies, and the website They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (which aggregates several lists, many of which also place Citizen Kane at the top). It's also, in my humble opinion, a genuinely good film, and one I sincerely want to revisit. I will say no more about what I intend to cover in my upcoming reflections, other than I can think of no films worthier with which to take the first step back into cinema. Stay tuned!