HOW CAN SO MANY PEOPLE CONFIDENTLY MAKE UP LISTS?

Everyone does lists: favorite books, movies, names, favorite everything! Even the new blogger format asks this of you: name this, describe yourself thus. To me, this is an impossibility. My favorites, my personals, they’re always in a state of flux.

Take movies: when I was 15, I saw Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet 45 times (I counted), paying each time the requisite Polish zloty (I lived in Warsaw then) over and over to sit through it. The colors, that youthful, zesty Juliet, Mercutio’s stunning movements, I could not get enough of it all. [Oh! I see that John McEnery, who played Mercutio, is currently appearing in a very minor role in “Girl with a Pear Earring!” I should see if he still evokes the same rapture, in his, ahem, slightly older countenance.]

But not for long. “R&J” got dumped once I discovered Lelouche’s ‘A Man and a Woman.’ [God, remember when he sings in the background ‘A l’ombre de nous’ – in the shadow of us; or when they come together but neither is ready, each lost in the death of their former love; oh, such a film! It was, btw, the Grand Prize winner at Cannes, in the 1960s… I can see it now, the cinematography is so slow, their love develops through the minutia of small, improvised gestures, glances; nuanced, gentle, hesitant, with exceptional acting; such a brilliantly artful film.]

That lasted until I went through my movies-in-the-shadow-of-WW II phase – especially ‘The Garden of Finzi-Continis,’ a 1971 film that blew me away. I dream about scenes from that movie still. [It was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Even Pauline Kael liked it! Again, a contemplative, initially subtle movie, that takes you through the lush Italian gardens slowly, and then plunges you into the horror of Fascist persecution of Italian Jews.]

And so on. A favorite? No favorite. It doesn’t work that way. A favorite may be defined by the context, or by the state of readiness to be mesmerized, to fall in love, to be driven insane. Often it has more to do with me, than with the movie itself.