8.5/10 – Grilled Seal of Approval

Turkish auteur Abbas Kiarostami’s first film outside of Turkey is a pleasant commentary on the changing state of relationships over time. When I watch one of these films (and by “these” I mean films with middle aged actors trying to figure out why their relationships went wrong or how to spend the rest of their lives or any number of other midlife crisis problems) I can’t help but wondering how my reaction to them will change over time.

I am currently young and able and as experienced in love and sex and relationships as one normally is at 25, so I look at these “midlife crisis” films from the far off perspective of an outsider. I can identify with the feelings and the situations, sure, but I will never truly understand the content until I have lived through it and have made similar mistakes and have had similar successes and conquests.

The three excellent, highly rated high school aged films of 2013 (The Way Way Back, The Spectacular Now, and The Kings of Summer) were important to me because I could directly connect with the events unfolding onscreen. Once upon a time you were a kid who thought life was a particular way and you had older people (parents/guardians/siblings/random strangers) telling you what you should or should not do all the time. Since I am closer to being a child of 15 than an “adult” of 45, I can identify more easily with the former, and also, of course, because I have not experienced the latter.

There are so many wonderful films in the world to discover and there are so many places to go and people to listen to and music to hear and paths to walk down that I have never been a supporter of watching a film over and over again, but there is undoubtably a power that results from it. When you revisit a film you revisit yourself. You return to your state of mind when you first watched the film. You remember your hopes and dreams and the things you needed or thought you needed. When you revisit a film you are opening a time capsule from your past. And, of course, your perspective on the events of the film will change over time. It is the same film that you saw ten years ago, but you have changed and your experience is now different.

So, sure, I liked Certified Copy. It was a good film. But these films deserve to be watched again when you are a little older and wiser and more experienced. They deserve another perspective that can only be given with time and a few more years of etched in mistakes.