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My career as a budding cinephile harks back to the early 2010s when I discovered what cinema can be by watching Bela Tarr's 2000 masterpiece Werckmeister Harmonies. When we say a film changed us, we often exaggerate, but with Harmonies I can say this and be sure there's not a grain of exaggeration to it. It changed me so deeply that I turned from a Sunday blockbuster movie watcher to a lover of the art of cinema overnight. Of course, becoming a cinephile is a long and thorny path, but my first watch of Werckmeister Harmonies was the evident beginning of my journey, no doubts about that. Now, one could speculate with the "what ifs" and "what nots". Maybe I'd venture down the road of cinema anyway through other means, other films, with different ideas and beliefs. I'm not denying that it indeed is possible that even if I hadn't watched Werckmeister Harmonies on that one September day of 2011, I would still somehow discover the beauty of film as a cinematic art. Still, I'd rather talk about what happened relative to what could've happened, and there's no denying that watching Harmonies was a huge milestone in my life. I was amazed by this film in a way I had never been amazed by anything else. The reason is simple: It wasn't a film that I finished and said "Wow! That was a great film!." Rather, it was a film that I finished and said, "Wow! I didn't think it was even possible to make a film like this! To shoot a scene like this, to move the camera like this, to create this sort of atmosphere."
It all feels like a coincidence: stumbling upon this film, finding a write-up from a guy who highly praised it (I'm still in contact with him to this day) and deciding to watch it. Without having any idea of what I'm about to witness, understanding nothing, but feeling everything. The rest is history. There were other films, will be others. But no other film has single-handedly made such a revolution in my life. With no other film can I trace such a clear-cut path from me nowadays, watching over 200 films a month, to me in 2011 after I watched Werckmeister Harmonies and said to myself "I must watch more films! I must find another film that will make me feel like this!" Funnily enough, I never did. No film made me feel exactly the way Harmonies did, not even other Bela Tarr works. If anything, this is a testament to the beauty of this masterpiece, but also to the brilliant diversity of cinema as an art form.
Of course, there's much more to say: what happened before, what happened next. About the group of cinephiles I somewhat joined shortly after watching Harmonies and their approach to film that I inadvertently took with me, about the guy whose playful scorn for others inspired my own cantankerous persona, about branching out to other websites and meeting all sorts of individuals there, from aloof cine-elitists to laid-back pulp lovers to mysterious ghosts to half-trolling brats. How things that happened in my own life informed and influenced my film assessment, how my standards decreased but my love for the art grew deeper, to finally how I enjoyed spending my time on MoFo as a place to rest from all serious things related to film.
I hardly ever read anything about cinema in my first 5+ years of cinephilia. I thought it would soil the purity of my experience. I still read very little, for various reasons. I detest the idea of a film critic, even if some critics are OK. It's just that it's always cinephiles who don't treat cinema as a job that have better taste and a more sincere outlook on the art form. As a result, I only sincerely follow 'amateur' cinephiles in multiple places.
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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.
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