By A.J. Serrano
I once read somewhere that the term cellar door is regarded by the French as the most beautiful combination of words in the English language.
I originally snickered at the notion as I imagined a group of Parisian intellectuals gathered around a table in Café de la Rotonde, shivering with orgasmic delight as they slowly enunciate each syllable of of the phrase.
But then I remembered- the joke’s on us.
The French may have chosen a decidedly unsexy English compound noun as the object of their aesthetic affection but, in comparison to the Americans’ selection of French terminology to incorporate into their daily conversations, the French win hands down. Were the English literary gods playing some kind of practical joke when they assigned the most lilting, lyrical terminology to such irritating universal experiences?
Case in point:
1) Diarrhea
2) Déjà vu
3) Mayonnaise
Whether it boasts a pretty French title or not, déjà vu remains an insolvable psychological Rubik’s cube. I can think of no other universal experience as maddeningly impenetrable to even the sharpest minds of the psychiatric field and as eerily dreamlike in its effect. There are at least forty published theories all grasping for a cause to this phenomenon. Put simply, déjà vu is irritating because of its stubborn refusal to be understood. And for this very reason, cinema is forever indebted to this bizarre experience.
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I have a habit of re-watching movies. A few weeks ago, after I popped in my copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas into the DVD player for the umpteen time, my roommate rolled his eyes in disbelief.
“How many times have you seen this movie? Don’t you get bored of it?” he blurted out in exasperation.
I gave this question some thought before I responded, diagramming a response in my mind that would be interesting enough to appease him but also concise enough to prevent any further discussion. I reverted back to the old reliable:
“It’s one of my favorites.”
This was a shit response and we both knew it but it allowed me to get back to my movie. In any case, later on I decided to give the question some serious thought and I came to the conclusion that the experience of re-watching a film is strikingly similar to the experience of déjà vu. And I don’t mean simply that the two experiences share an “I’ve seen this before” quality.
Rather, the through line between the two is that tingling sensation of doubt, that second-guessing of yourself after the initial wave of familiarity fades, the lingering question of “Have I actually seen this before?”
I don’t think the phrase “re-watch a movie” does the action much justice. When I was younger, I watched the movie Jumanji so many times that scenes from the film began to appear in my dreams. Soon after, with the sights and sounds from the film so embedded in my subconscious, my déjà vus became a jumbled mess of fact and fiction. Though not necessarily a dangerous cognitive development, I was getting a bit tired of every traffic stop vaguely reminding me of an elephant stampede. I decided to give the movie a rest for a while.
After a few years, I re-watched the movie and found myself incredibly disappointed. I was convinced that some of the scenes I had loved so dearly as a child had been cut out. To my shock, my memory had perused my brain’s vast memory banks for certain visual and sonic episodes from my past to use to spice up the film, completely reconstructing my concept of the movie during that lengthy interval between viewings.
Though I don’t get as bewildered as my younger self when I now re-watch films, there still exists that vague sensation of “Have I actually seen this before?” I think this déjà vu-esque quality is what really makes a film a classic.
Films that experiment with perspective, narrative structure and production techniques such as Mulholland Drive, Citizen Kane, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Caché all imitate the complex, dreamlike rationality that can also be found during an experience of déjà vu. Just like every instance of déjà vu shares a few common traits but, ultimately, all differ immensely from one another, each new viewing of one of these films reveals new information and countless interpretations.
Be it cinema or déjà vu, the end result is the same: you are dreaming while awake.
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