I found this blog prompt amusing because except for a few movies that I’ve seen multiple times, such as “Let it Ride” and “The Princess Bride,” I’ve pretty much erased every movie I’ve ever seen from memory, so seeing any of them again would be seeing them for the first time. I didn’t purposely erase them, you understand. Life did. Time did. In fact, the only titles I remember are the two listed above.
When Jeff and I first moved to an area where the only television programming we could get was through cable, we decided to splurge and sign up for a premium movie package. Back then, when such channels were new, we had forty to fifty new movies to watch every month. As time went on, and more channels were created and more deals made, the new offerings became less and less until there were only a handful of new movies to watch each month. So we watched a lot of movies over and over again.
Before then, I’d seldom gone to the movies because I preferred to read since I could set my own pace, and I never even owned a television until Jeff and I got together, so movie watching was new to me. I think we watched just about every movie ever made until . . . hmm. I don’t remember until when.
I could watch movies if I wanted — I have hundreds of movies that Jeff had collected and although I never use it, I do have a television. Unfortunately, movie-watching doesn’t have the same effect when you watch them alone as they do when you watch them with someone who has the same level of appreciation. Besides, I seem to have erased the idea of movie watching from memory as well as the movies themselves. Despite the television’s blank eye staring at me, I never even consider watching a movie.
Perhaps someday I will watch some of those collected movies again, but until then, the movie erasure continues, so that when I do watch them, they will be new.
Not that it matters if I do remember. I like knowing ahead of time what is happening — I’m past the stage in my life where nail-biting tension has any allure. I like seeing the action, like knowing as it is happening what the characters will be facing before they do since it adds an extra level of participation. Oddly, I don’t like either in my life — not tension, and certainly not knowing the future, which if known, would probably bring with it a whole lot of tension.
So I guess, to answer the question: there isn’t any specific movie I would like to see again for the first time. As of right now, there isn’t any movie I want to see at all.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One
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