Citizen Kane

4/13/21

I expected broader scope from the unanimous greatest film ever made. I haven't seen Gone with the Wind, for example, but I guess it's much longer and more epic, spanning more history and sweeping more emotions. Citizen Kane seems to be a character study, and though the character may represent some fundamental of human nature, culture, and history, therefore making the film a study of said fundamental, it feels more intimate than grand, which I think is typically a bane to GOAT-qualifying. Maybe not everyone agrees. The fictions that have struck me as greatest throughout my life include: Synecdoche NY, Magnolia, Lord of the Rings, 2001. Lately I loved Les Mis. I think I'm a sucker for grandeur, which I think gets me through stuff like superhero movies. I love the larger-than-life power of Superman and Gandalf. I think everyone's a sucker for grandeur, but maybe I especially? Even Synecdoche, which definitely orbits one character as Citizen Kane does, seems comparatively transcendent. Maybe I think Caden represents more of the soul than Kane does, or at least more of my soul. I guess part of the problem is Citizen Kane didn't stir emotion, which may reflect my temporal distance from the source. It's hard to call something the greatest that never stirred emotion, when greatness typically stirs great emotion. It seems greatness should be affecting, and the greatest should be exquisite. Citizen Kane did not force the word "greatest" into my head, unlike (trying to think of an analogy) someone watching Michael Jordan's run in the 90s? I'm sure much literature exists on the topic, and more since Brady's last Super Bowl. I'd expect a train of intuition like "wow, that was the broadest x deepest x richest display of this genre of human achievement I've ever witnessed" and a complementary flood of wonder. Citizen Kane did feel like a great movie, without the flood of wonder. Again, the temporal distance wouldn't help. Maybe in 1941 the sweep of one man's life felt as awesome as today's interstellar odyssey. Maybe the film struck and challenged the zeitgeist like Bob Dylan in the 60s (I recently read a celebration of Dylan and Welles as the century's two artistic geniuses). It must have felt something tremendous at the time. For me, it was just a matter of interest, of study -- not relevance, not pathos.

How universal is Kane? His circumstances and consequences are singular. Maybe Rosebud is the keyword to his relatability: it points to the time his life was normal, and its persistence anchors him in relatable experience. Singular circumstances breed singular consequences, but Rosebud reveals the universal nature governing the process. One might imagine the Rosebud of a serial killer recalling the distant time he was a normal boy no less than the richest man on earth recalling the same. But revealing Kane's universality at the end just engages the intellect, while persuading our empathies throughout the film of his universality would have engaged the soul. It's hard to venerate that which only entertains the intellect. Citizen Kane bore little weight on me, excellent as it seemed. I believed he was relatable by the end, but I didn't feel empathy's love, despite our kindred egotisms. I also didn't feel awesome love, which can compensate for empathetic love, as in my love for Gandalf. Kane excited neither. Just interest, and respect.

It's such a film. It feels more like a class in film techniques that is also a great film than the greatest film. It's not emotional enough.

After just reading Citizen Kane's entire Wikipedia page, I still don't understand its superlative position, just its general superiority. It's really hard to say "greatest" in something like art, so if everyone is saying it, one would expect an undeniable instinct to accompany the experience. I didn't get that at all. Interestingly, Wikipedia attempts some genealogy of the film's reputation, which may be the key here: not the film itself, but its reputation's genealogy. There's some dynamics to reputation that can be talked about independent of the reputation's object. By whatever means, Citizen Kane lodged itself on top; rather, people having nothing to do with the creation of Citizen Kane intentionally or unintentionally lodged it on top. It seems Citizen Kane has become the greatest film of all time by being a great film and looking good in the high seat. Some things look good in the high seat. Other things seem to deserve the high seat but don't look good there -- unless function follows form. I'm not sure Citizen Kane looks especially good up there to me, but it does look something like a quintessential American movie.