Citizen Kane.

Well, it's time to write again. Actually, it was time to write again a long time ago, but I've been lacking an incentive, a motivation to log-on and try to conjure up some semblance of rhetoric. But at last, my motivation has come, although I still required some coercion on my own part to sit down and put fingers to keyboard. The motivation: Orson Welles' classic Citizen Kane.

Citizen Kane is an old, black-and-white movie directed, co-written, and starred in by Orson Welles (possibly the only thing the average American has seen him in is a cameo bit part in The Muppet Movie - yes, the aged, corpulent studio head at the end of the movie is Orson Welles). The movie, though too "old and boring" to sit through for today's adrenaline-saturated movie audiences, was one of the most controversial films ever made and the pinnacle of Welles' short-lived career (not counting another forty years of low-budget indie flops).

The film is a thinly-veiled semi-biography of pre-Depression era newspaper giant William Hearst. Welles' depictions of Hearst (whose name was changed to Charles Foster Kane in the movie) and his mistress were so unfavorable, even slanderous, that Hearst (at that time, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world) did all within his power to have the movie banned and/or destroyed. Obviously, his efforts were unsuccessful, but the fight contributed in large part to the ruin of both men's' reputations and careers. Sadly, Welles' life ended up being much like the character's that he played.

The movie was hailed by critics at the time of its release as a masterpiece, the next offering from the mind of a genius (Orson Welles' previous radio presentation of H.G. Well's book War of the Worlds had created nationwide panic when listeners became convinced that the story of Martian invaders told through fake news reports was real). Since then, the film has made its way onto many serious movie critics' top 10 lists, even being ranked by a major film organization as the greatest film ever made.

Although I hesitate to give it the same honor (and I know that it would make few layman's lists of greatest movies ever made), I would certainly say that it is one of the best crafted movies of all time. The cinematography, themes, acting, lighting, and (at times) even soundtrack were years ahead of its time, sometimes even decades ahead.

The major theme of the film revolves around a reporter's efforts to uncover the meaning of Kane's final word on this deathbed: "Rosebud" (ring a bell with anyone?). In his journalistic exploration, the nameless reporter talks with many of Kane's closest associates, friends, and family, who, through their on-screen memories, reveal a life full of frantic achievement and unimaginable loss.

Why am I writing all this? Well, partly because I don't know anybody else who has seen this movie and this is the only way that I can do my usual rehash/review of every movie that I see, but also because the theme of gain/loss struck me. Here is a man who spent his whole life trying to reach greatness and even to thrust it upon reluctant others, a man seeking the love of the common citizens without being willing to love them back, a man whose own power and riches were his insurmountable barriers to happiness. To paraphrase Kane's own words, he could have been a great man if he hadn't been rich.

Now, I don't want to turn this into a cliche (sorry, my computer won't make the accent mark) about how you can't take it with you or about how power corrupts, but that's exactly what stood out to me: Charles Kane sought desperately for love, security, power, and riches, but in the end it was his methods of obtaining those aspirations that doomed him. I suppose, then, that the lesson to be learned is that the ends do not justify the means.

I realize that this may sound like a lot of philosophical fluff being injected into a simple film experience, but for me, the magic of movies (and the mark of the great ones) is that they meet two requirements: one, they transport the viewer out of their current environment and state of mind to another place in their imagination, and two, that they leave the viewer better in some way. Now, I'm not saying that any good movie has to be an epic fantasy or that it has to have a feel-good, happy ending where the main character looks at the camera and, addressing the audience, says, "Today, kids, we learned about the importance of sharing..." (although I loved that part of every "He-Man" episode). In fact, many of the best films I've ever seen have been dark and gloomy (i.e. Batman Begins), but (and here's the clincher) I learned something from it. Therein lies the value and redeeming quality of entertainment. It doesn't exist (or at least shouldn't exist, in my opinion) simply to provide our brains with somewhere to go when we switch them off. It should make us feel something, think about something, change something. It should elevate us in someway.

So next time you watch a movie or listen to a song or read a book, try looking for the lesson to be learned, and then when it's over, try finishing the statement, "Today, I learned about...."