Citizen Kane
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[edit] Blurb
Considered for most movie critics as the best movie of all times. The story of Charles Foster Kane, the richest and most powerful man in America. From a buddhist point of view, this movie shows that even the rich and powerful cannot escape suffering (dukka).[1]
[edit] View from Nowhere
[edit] Other Views from Nowhere
Is Citizen Kane the best movie ever made? Many critics would argue "yes" without pause, but my enthusiasm is more restrained. For more than half a semester, I have been avoiding writing a review of this movie. And there are two reasons of it. First, for the first time I finished this movie, I didn’t quite understand the theme. Perhaps I was not sensitive enough. Besides, that is my first time to watch the black-and-white English movie. It is said that Citizen Kane is the greatest motion picture to come out of America during the black-and-white era, but to be frank, that is my beginning and end of this kind of movie till now. So I can’t give my own opinion in this respect. Second, “The movie is a visual masterpiece, a kaleidoscope of daring angles and breathtaking images that had never been attempted before, and has never been equaled since.”; “Toland perfected a deep-focus technique that allowed him to photograph backgrounds with as much clarity as foregrounds”. But It doesn’t seem right somehow to discuss a picture of this magnitude without viewing it at least once in the manner originally envisioned. However, though not very intangible for me, this movie leaves something interesting in my mind. That is at the beginning, Kane uttered the word “Rosebud”. Is it a woman he bedded? A horse he bet on? A beloved pet? Some long-lost, unrequited love? The truth, which isn't revealed until the closing scene, represents one of the all-time greatest motion picture ironies, and leads us to believe that, on some level, Kane regretted not having led a simple, quiet life. It is a tragic movie. And I am willing to believe that a quite and simple life is not a bad thing. But acquiring power and putting it into right use, for me, is as important as the “Rosebud” in my life.[2]
