— छह हज़ार तैंतीस —
I have now spent a truly inordinate amount of time scouring archived Word document copies of letters to Barbara from 1997 and 1998, looking for any mention of seeing
Barry Lyndon, which I saw at SIFF Cinema Downtown (Cinerama) last night, during the "Topics in Film" course I took in college.
All this time I thought I took that class in 1997, but it turns out it was in 1998, during my spring semester—and thus last semester—of my Senior year. I found several mentions of the class, and a bunch of mentions of the movies I saw, plus mentions of a bunch of other movies I went to. I thus went on a spree of logging movies I saw in 1997 and 1998 on Letterboxd, adding a bunch of titles. Most of the movies for Topics in Film I was required to watch three times, so most of those movies got logged that many times. My total number of logged films on my Letterboxd account is now up to 3,738. But, none of
Barry Lyndon before last night. I clearly did not mention every movie in that class in letters to Barbara, which are the closest thing I have to journals from that time. Oh well. I may just log them with estimating viewing dates, since I know I had to watch it three times. Maybe I'll just pick a weekend from March, the one month from the archived letters in which I did not mention a Topics in Film class viewing. Okay, what the hell, I've
gone ahead and done it.
— छह हज़ार तैंतीस —
— छह हज़ार तैंतीस —
Anyway, that movie took up nearly the entirety of my evening last night. I rode home from work on my bike, and since Shobhit had made something for himself for dinner I made my sample "veggie chicken tenders" from a broker coupon I recently picked up. They were made out of monkfruit and actually way better than I expected. Shobhit decided not to have chai but I still made myself some, and since I wasn't done drinking it yet when I had to leave again I just took it with me in my Yeti mug.
I wanted to get there early enough to get a good seat. The showtime was at 7:00, I walked down to SIFF Cinema Downtown and got in line at 6:06. I was eighth in line when I got there, but a couple of people joined others ahead of me in line after that. Still, I managed to snag my favorite seat on the balcony, to the side of the middle section by the aisle for ease of getting out should I need to use the bathroom.
This was probably the best-looking version I had ever seen of
Barry Lyndon, and it was indeed gorgous—especially in the part after the internission (side note: please bring intermissions back for long movies like this! it's so great to get a bathroom break). Can I see why people think it's a masterpiece? Maybe. Not really. I guess. I'd have to do more research, see YouTube videos on all the pastoral paintings so many of the shots were meant to mirror or something.
Still, I was much more engaged with it than I had been in college. In fact, when I went to
log this viewing on Letterboxd, I was surprised to find I had already rated it once, back in 2020, with only two out of five stars, probably based on my experience with it in college, which it had bored the hell out of me. As I suspected might happen, I do feel differently about it now. It's not my favorite movie ever, but I was still compelled by it.
Between pre-show introduction and several trailers, this 3-hour, 5-minute movie did not end until well after 10:00. I walked to Pike and caught a #10 bus home, and was in bed well after 11:00. Was it worth it? I suppose I'd say it was. This was a very rare opportunity to see this great a print of a movie known for its cinematography and costume design.
— छह हज़ार तैंतीस —
[posted 12:31pm]
