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Tonight I finally got to see my all-time favorite movie, If...., in the theater. Before this I had only seen it on a VHS dub I made from a crappy library copy.
I'm pretty sure I was turned onto If.... by reading Timothy Leary's Politics of Ecstasy (which also led me to read Herman Hesse) as part of my project to explore counter-culture in my mid-teens. I can't begin to defend it as my favorite movie. It's certainly rough, and the politics/philosophy are... undeveloped. I read somewhere that you have to be a British teenage male to truly appreciate the movie, and I was 2/3 of that when I first saw it. There was always a part of me that wanted to believe in lines like "There's no such thing as a wrong war. Violence and revolution are the only pure acts." The intensity of experience spoke to me then, and it still does.
Best of all, it turns out that Criterion is finally releasing an edition on Tuesday! I've been waiting for this on DVD since I first got a player. Just short of ten years later, I will finally be able to consider my collection functionally complete.
I'm pretty sure I was turned onto If.... by reading Timothy Leary's Politics of Ecstasy (which also led me to read Herman Hesse) as part of my project to explore counter-culture in my mid-teens. I can't begin to defend it as my favorite movie. It's certainly rough, and the politics/philosophy are... undeveloped. I read somewhere that you have to be a British teenage male to truly appreciate the movie, and I was 2/3 of that when I first saw it. There was always a part of me that wanted to believe in lines like "There's no such thing as a wrong war. Violence and revolution are the only pure acts." The intensity of experience spoke to me then, and it still does.
Best of all, it turns out that Criterion is finally releasing an edition on Tuesday! I've been waiting for this on DVD since I first got a player. Just short of ten years later, I will finally be able to consider my collection functionally complete.