If you like film, you’d probably benefit from rewatching movies more often. The act can help us refine our tastes, and educate us on a film’s construction, making us more astute film watchers. It’s also a dependably fun way to spend a few hours, especially for movies you love.
Rewatches matter because we can never experience the same movie in the same way twice. Our memories of our first watch always recontextualize the next. They free our brain up to refocus on other aspects of a movie. Often that allows us to pay less attention to the plot (we remember the story beats and ending), and more on the acting and technical underpinnings.
To put it another way, the rewatch, boosted by our memories, gives us a more comprehensive, expansive view on a film. We get to digest more aspects of the movie we may have missed the first time. And as we repeat this behavior over multiple movies, it’s easier to draw connections and patterns in the kind of movies we are drawn to.
As an example, I love Drive, In the Mood For Love, and Mulholland Drive. These are unquestionably extremely different films. Drive is a hyper violent, neon-soaked revenge thriller. Mood is slow burn, restrained drama and romance in sixties Hong Kong. Mulholland is a dreamlike mystery puzzle box.
On first watch I couldn’t identify exactly why I was so enthusiastic about each movie. Nor would I have had a clue on how to draw connections between the films. But a rewatch gave me the headspace to find more depth from each selection. For Drive, I admired the texture of a near wordless heist sequence that opens the movie. A pulsing Chromatics track and Ryan Gosling’s glances push the action forward. In Mood, I caught on the way Christopher Doyle’s camera would accentuate Maggie Chueng’s and Tony Leung’s subtle physical acting, be it in a slow motion shot of one character walking in the rain, or an insert shot of one character’s hand upon another.
For Mulholland, an early scene at a diner combines odd floating cinematography, an unsettled yet believable character reciting a dream, and an explosive sound cue at its climax. The elements combine to serve up a terrifying jump scare. Seemingly disconnected from the main narrative and lasting no more than six minutes, I was struck by how much it left me unnerved for the rest of the film.
What connects all three examples is their stylized and unorthodox mood and texture. The movies differ in creative intent and genre, but often champion atmosphere at the expense of more traditional narrative structural elements. It’s the kind of revelation that I only found was possible from rewatches.
Rewatches can also be instructive. They help us appreciate high caliber film craftsmanship that may be more challenging to register on our first viewing. After my first watch of a critically acclaimed movie, I often dive into reviews and analysis to find what parts of the film are the most lauded. I try to keep these parts of the movie top of mind on rewatch to learn from. It’s a simple and repeatable way to up your knowledge about film.
For example, most contemporary reassessments of Frances Ford Coppola’s The Conversation praise Gene Hackman’s sensational lead performance. However, Hackman’s portrayal of surveillance expert Harry Caul is quiet and understated by design. It’s the kind of acting prowess that can go unnoticed with the film’s flashy editing and paranoid thriller plotting. But keying into Hackman’s brilliance is one of the main reasons I find rewatches of the movie so enjoyable. Watching Hackman’s subtle physical acting, posture, and the tiny variations he uses in his voice to deliver otherwise unassuming lines sets a blueprint on how great actors can create rich characters while staying small.
Admittedly not every film benefits from a second look. Never experiencing the same movie twice can be an unkind aspect to comedies you saw with an enthusiastic crowd, or a thriller with a shocking twist. Movies with more downbeat subject matter may be too emotionally taxing to watch again. And leaning too hard into rewatches can be counterproductive, an overly reliant ‘safe zone’ when we still should be seeking out new fare.
But I still believe strongly for most, we’d benefit by revisiting what we’ve seen, especially when we fall in love with it. In a world where film is just one choice of ‘content’ among an infinite variety, reaffirming why movies rock can be some of the most gratifying ways I spend my free time. It can be for you as well.