You Can't Go back

Two Films about the past we can't return to.

There is a time and a place where we belong. Sometimes that place is not ideal, and it feels like the moment will never end. Other times, it is joyous, and we wish it would never end. Whether precious or painful, we can never go back. The wish for a time machine is never granted once a moment has passed.

Many of those moments come from childhood. The nostalgia we long for is never the same as adults. I know that many television shows I once loved as a child seem foolish now. Many of the films I watched in my 20s feel different in my 30s. I saw Citizen Kane from a completely different perspective this time. Every aspect of this film could be discussed endlessly, but what stands out most is what Kane cannot let go of. He had everything a person could want, yet none of it mattered in the end. All he wanted was a childhood he could never return to. I look back on my own childhood with gratitude and appreciation. Our childhood shapes who we become, but it is not something we can live in forever.

That feeling is not limited to childhood. It can happen at any point in life. War may come with expectations going in, but it is what a soldier carries out that defines him. The Deer Hunter is the most soul-crushing film I have ever seen. The first time I watched it, the emotional impact stayed with me for months. This past week, I watched it again for the first time in years and almost had to turn it off when the song Cavatina played over the opening credits. I fought the tears as hard as the characters fought to stay alive. To see a normal and joyful life taken away by war is heartbreaking. Robert De Niro’s character wants so badly to return to the life he once knew, but he has gone through something that makes that impossible. When he returns, his old life is still there, but he is not the same. Christopher Walken gives the best performance of his career. By the time he is reached, he is so far removed from the person he once was that even if given the chance to go back, there is no path to make that happen.

Very rarely do I get to watch two of my top ten personal favorite films in the same week. It had been years since I last saw either of them. The feeling was the same, but the thoughts were different. Our past is meant to stay there. Learning to live with it is the only way forward.