The Movie of Me

Scott Hardie | April 17, 2024
Is there any movie that sums up who you are as a person?

The prompt online (from a since-deleted Twitter account, so I can't link to it) that inspired this question was: "You're dating someone new and you have the opportunity to show them one movie that encompasses everything there is to know about you — your values, your fantasies, and your fears. What's the film?"

To me, this seems like too tall of an order for any one movie (everything there is to know about me?), unless you've somehow been the subject of a biopic. But the tweet had 3000 responses according to the screen grab that I saw. Some of those were doubtless only jokes, like I might have responded Mac & Me or something. But I assume that some of those people had serious answers.

So, I pose the same question to you.

Samir Mehta | April 17, 2024
[hidden by request]

Erik Bates | April 18, 2024
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Scott Hardie | May 6, 2024
Both good movies, though yes, Garden State feels less essential the further we age away from it. Perhaps the opposite is true of Synecdoche, New York, which I feel like I'm aging into.

I still struggle to think of an appropriate answer for myself. Many movies that once meant a great deal to me have evolved in my perception; for instance, where I once admired Braveheart for its passionate defense of liberty and its evocation of my ethnic heritage (my name literally means "Scottish"), I now see its bloodlust and aggression as huge negatives, and its antisemitic star deserves his banishment from Hollywood. Thus, it's hard for me to trust any answer that I'd give today; would Everything Everywhere All at Once mean the same things in 2032 or 2042 that it did upon its release in 2022?

What I think comes closest is Do the Right Thing, which I have loved for three decades now. What it says about community, about passion and anger, about the value of life, and most of all about morality -- that we must do the right thing even when it hurts us -- come closest to dramatizing my own personal ethics. It's just a near-perfect drama and I love it, and it's as close to me as a movie can get, if you don't count the Brooklyn-specific cultural markers. (One black mark against it is Rosie Perez being forced to do that topless scene. Shame on Spike Lee for that.)