Most of the time, my dedication and love for a movie means one thing: continued, repeated viewings. This is why I've watched
Mermaids,
Annie Hall and
The Pirates of Penzance every single day of my young life (no exaggeration), and if you must know, doing so adds an unparalleled richness to my existence. But there are other movies I've loved at least as much that I never,
ever want to see again.
Most of these are probably pretty obvious, because most of them are pretty distressing. In some cases, I've blocked out the viewing experience completely, so that if asked I can hardly remember anything about the film except that it 'affected' me.
It’s obviously not a concise list. There's a bunch of films that probably also belong here—
Pan’s Labyrinth,
Bad Boy Bubby to name a couple—that I've actually still never seen—probably precisely because of their aptness for a list such as this. Also, as I was writing, I found my choices were mostly just getting
creepier instead of interestingly harrowing or merely just foreign and
disquieting, but I realised I probably could have gone on forever.
Feel free to add your own.
10. Boys Don’t Cry
What to say. Swank and Sevigny. A terrible story that is even more terrible because it really happened. I came out of the cinema loving the film and hating humanity. I'll never watch it again.
9. Requiem for a Dream
The main feeling I recall from my one and only viewing of this film at the cinema is: no room to breathe. It was like a hefty weight that was crushing against me for two hours. Ask me to recall a single scene and I won't be able to; I've blocked it all out. Thus I am clearly in no position to even be talking about it so I won't.
8. The Crying Game
I watched this when I was twelve with my mum, and the sound of her horrified gasp during the 'pivotal scene' is forever etched in my memory. The only way I will ever watch it again is when I have my own kid to view it with so I can keep up the family tradition. Because even a young child can see how stunning this film is, at least once they stop shaking from the intense trauma of it.
7. Drawing Restraint 9
Bjork and Barney metamorphosing into whales by slicing off each other’s limbs, after they involve themselves in an elaborate Japanese tea ceremony? Yes please! Incredible. And tedious. And really the sort of thing you need only ever see once.
6. The Tulse Luper Suitcases Parts 1-3
I watched Peter Greenaway’s three-film epic at ACMI in Melbourne one year, but I can’t actually remember much about it except for an amazing scene involving sex and stone fruit. The movie has something to do with the history of Uranium and 92 suitcases. I remember sitting there day after day and coming out of it with no idea of what I had just sat through but I AM PRETTY SURE I LIKED IT!
5. The Boys
I seem to find myself talking about this film all the time and yet I’ve still only seen it once. I don’t know if anything has ever affected me so deeply as the final scene in this movie. I just can't get that image out of my head; the one of the cab driving past with its 'available' light on just moments before David Wenham says: 'Let's get 'er'. It sends shivers down my spine and inspires me to spend hundreds of dollars every year on cab fares.
4. Regarde le Mer (See the Sea)
My brother and I caught this unsettling Francois Ozon film late one night on SBS when we were teenagers, and it's haunted me ever since. It's also made me paranoid of ever leaving my toothbrush out in case some psycho stranger comes into my house and brushes it in poo. Basically, it’s about a psycho stranger. Who brushes someone’s toothbrush in poo. She also does several other horrendous things to a woman and a child and it doesn't end well. It will haunt you forever. You have to see it.
3. Irreversible
For some idiotic reason, I saw this on my birthday one year and it sent me spiralling into a dark depression for days. I’m pretty sure my sudden embracing of all movies harmless, rom com and American can probably be dated from around this time, and stems in direct retaliation to this film.
If you’re not utterly destroyed by the brutal violence, then you will be by the final words that appear on the screen:
Le temps detruit tout—'Time destroys everything.' After what you've just been through, you're pretty sure you'll never feel good about anything ever again. Happy birthday.
2. I’m Not There
I saw this in New York the day after Heath Ledger died and purely because of the timing it was one of the saddest films I’ve ever seen. I remember such a heaviness in the cinema; couples huddling together, winter cold. People were actually audibly weeping when Ledger was on-screen. It was horrible. It was like the opening scene of
Evita where they are all watching an old Eva Peron film and the announcement comes over the cinema loudspeaker that she's just died and women scream and collapse to the floor and men have to hold them up and comfort them while stiffly trying to choke back their own tears. Awful. Oh, but the film was wonderful.
1. Almost anything by Lars von Trier
But mainly
Breaking the Waves,
Dogville and
Dancer in the Dark. As much as I loves them, I don't ever want to see any of them ever again. Thanks for listening.