Film commentary “on”

I got Netflicked. It’s cool though, it didn’t hurt too bad.

My friends played a game in high school where you imagined that if someone were going to make a movie of your life, who would the director be? It seemed way too deep and complicated a topic for me--I had no real opinions about movies and I don’t think I could choose any director by name. I just smiled and nodded and said stuff like “Someone really weird.”

In college people played the movie game again, “Who would the director of the movie of your life be?” I finally had an answer. David Lynch.

This answer always impressed my fellow game-players. I always got ohhs and ahhs over this answer as everyone was duly impressed with how clever I must secretly be. I still didn’t really know much about movies, but I understood the game now. I had to pretend to be impressed when other people named a director I had never heard of, and I had to ask why they felt this director captured some insight into their lives. The “insight” part was the interesting thing ‘cause it really showed what people thought of themselves.

When people asked why I chose David Lynch, I was ready with the best movie-of-your-life game answer ever, “Because he would see the unusual connections between events and objects in my life that I feel.” Pretty cool huh? I didn’t crib that answer off of anyone, and to this day I still kinda believe it.

This game came up again in grad school somehow. This time I think it was my friends’ time-waster instead of one of those college-aged insights into personal philosophy. The grad school incarnation of the movie-of-your-life game was “Who would play you in the movie version of grad school?” Wow. Now I have to think about directors and actors? I don’t think I even tried to guess. Actually, I did pick someone, but I can’t remember who. What I remember was my friends’ answer, “No, that’s not right. You’re played by Thora Birch.” I was amazingly flattered that my friends had thought so hard about me that they come up with my mirror actress, but I admitted I had no idea who she was. “Ghost World” they told me. That I remembered, and she was perfect for me in the same David Lynch-ian way.

Now Netflixx is playing the exact same game with me, and it’s kind of messing with my head. Since Netflixx gnomes are so advanced, they understand what movies you like and recommend movies based on that. In my perpetual media naiveté, I blithely click on these movies and add them to my queue. And then they come to my house and I wonder, “Why on earth did I pick this movie???”

Enter Luis Bunuel and “That Obscure Object of Desire.” Woah. I think Luis Bunuel might be my new David Lynch, except Bunuel might be a little too scary. I watched “That Obscure Object of Desire” twice, the second time forcing my husband to watch with me so I could point out every cinematic clue and shout my hypotheses at him. At the end of the movie I finally confronted him and demanded to know what his interpretation of Bunuel’s symbolism was. He said, “Your ideas were fine. I don’t really like French Surrealism.”

I’m not exactly positive what that meant, but in the spirit of the movie-of-your-life game I nodded in appreciation of the depth of his answer.