So I've watching two different documentary miniseries lately about the history of film -- The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2001, dir. Mark Cousins) and The Movies (2019) -- and it made me start to think about how certain novels and films can influence you and speak to you on a deep level.
So -- what films and works of literature have been important or influential to your life?
I'll start:
Nineteen Eighty-Four just might be the most important novel I've ever read. It's this gripping work that instantly transports me every time I sit down to read it, and I always get something new out of it.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy are just astonishing works of literature. The 2011 film adaptation of the latter never fails to take my breath away.
Looking for Alaska is an incredibly moving novel about grief and guilt. It speaks to me a lot about the nature of nostalgia, of lost innocence, and of holding onto one's inner child even in adulthood. The Stand, that epic novel about the death and rebirth of America, has never lost its relevance to me -- especially not this year!
Certain YA novels I read in middle school have always stayed with me, too: Jacob Have I Loved, Bridge to Terabithia, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry all come to mind. Lord of the Flies has always stayed with me, too, even though I am today perhaps a bit more skeptical of its view of human nature.
In film, The Dark Knight just feels like 2008 to me -- a time when (naively, in retrospect) it felt like society was about to come apart. Titanic is a film that never fails to sweep me away with its Golden Age Hollywood melodrama -- but its political subtext is unmistakable to me today. Certain arch classics always transport me -- The Wizard of Oz, the original Star Wars trilogy, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Hook, Independence Day, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Shrek, Superman. Disney Renaissance classics like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Malcom X, The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, Forrest Gump (though I have a lot of problems with this one's politics today). Classics like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's A Wonderful Life. More modern fare like 12 Years A Slave, Sorry to Bother You, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lincoln, Vice, The Witch, The Artist.
Certain plays are also very important to me, among them M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang; Angels in America by Tony Kushner; The Saliva Milkshake by Howard Brenton; Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill; Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht.
What about you?
So -- what films and works of literature have been important or influential to your life?
I'll start:
Nineteen Eighty-Four just might be the most important novel I've ever read. It's this gripping work that instantly transports me every time I sit down to read it, and I always get something new out of it.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy are just astonishing works of literature. The 2011 film adaptation of the latter never fails to take my breath away.
Looking for Alaska is an incredibly moving novel about grief and guilt. It speaks to me a lot about the nature of nostalgia, of lost innocence, and of holding onto one's inner child even in adulthood. The Stand, that epic novel about the death and rebirth of America, has never lost its relevance to me -- especially not this year!
Certain YA novels I read in middle school have always stayed with me, too: Jacob Have I Loved, Bridge to Terabithia, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry all come to mind. Lord of the Flies has always stayed with me, too, even though I am today perhaps a bit more skeptical of its view of human nature.
In film, The Dark Knight just feels like 2008 to me -- a time when (naively, in retrospect) it felt like society was about to come apart. Titanic is a film that never fails to sweep me away with its Golden Age Hollywood melodrama -- but its political subtext is unmistakable to me today. Certain arch classics always transport me -- The Wizard of Oz, the original Star Wars trilogy, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Hook, Independence Day, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Shrek, Superman. Disney Renaissance classics like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Malcom X, The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, Forrest Gump (though I have a lot of problems with this one's politics today). Classics like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's A Wonderful Life. More modern fare like 12 Years A Slave, Sorry to Bother You, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lincoln, Vice, The Witch, The Artist.
Certain plays are also very important to me, among them M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang; Angels in America by Tony Kushner; The Saliva Milkshake by Howard Brenton; Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill; Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht.
What about you?
