I had been dating Carolyn for only a few months and we were looking forward to seeing the new WWII film, Windtalkers. I thought she would enjoy the experience more fully if she had a better understanding of the historical context and so I casually engaged her in conversation. Her questions revealed some disconcerting defects in her education; If there was a WWII why wasn't there a WWI? And was there a WWIII? For some reason I wanted her to share my passionate fascination with history, but realized that just telling her everything I know would be pointless. Too much information too quickly and without enough appeal. My idea was to rent a couple of videos that could make the two world wars come alive for her... maybe Legends of the Fall followed by Pearl Harbor, but then I remembered watching Winds of War the mini~series in the early 80's and I thought that would be perfectly informative while sufficiently dramatic and entertaining. Carolyn pointed out the one thing she did know about WWII was that General MacArthur was a key figure. This she was acquainted with from childhood inasmuch as she grew up in the Philippines where he is still considered a hero. So we agreed to watch the movie about his exploits starring Gregory Peck and then I felt our movie marathon wouldn't be complete without John Wayne's Sands of Iwo Jima. So much of what I had learned about the world around me I have learned from watching movies, I wanted Carolyn to have this same appreciation. The more you know about your world, I reasoned, the greater capacity you gain for loving it.
But it spun out of control. I became obsessed with my movie project. It wasn't enough to see a few films about two specific wars. I wanted her to see movies about my favorite, the American Civil War, but how helpful would that be if she didn't know anything about the American Revolution? And I began quizzing her; What is another name for The War Between the States? What is another name for The War of Independence? And on and on.
I had to include The Crucible because it depicts colonial America so well and also Last of the Mohicans because it's the only significant movie addressing the French and Indian War. These two boasted the advantage of being significant to literature as well! And what about European history? I added The Messenger to the project so she would know about Joan of Arc and Shakespeare in Love and then I began hunting for movies about Henry VIII and Elizabeth.
I was just warming up. By God, why not go all the way back to the beginning? I had her watch John Huston's epic film, The Bible which starts with Adam and Eve and ends with George C. Scott playing an almost demented Abraham. Augmenting the biblical aspects of the project, I began searching online for good movies about Joseph and Samson and David and Jesus.
At first I was happy to rent these movies but soon it occurred to me we might have kids one day and this project would benefit them as well, so I began to collect the films and VHS wouldn't be around forever so I converted to DVD's. I was so focused on this project that my eagerness became problematic. I was virtually begging Carolyn to watch whatever the next film in the project might be and sometimes it got on her nerves. I resorted occasionally to bargaining with her. I would go to the mall with her only if she would agree to watch a movie with me when we got home. I would always have the next one cued up in the DVD player and and I wouldn't tell her which one it was either. My opinion being that the best way to enjoy a movie is for all its suspense to be fanatically protected and that included not knowing what the movie was about beforehand. Sometimes she would tease me that I couldn't ever break up with her because then there would be no more film project. And what's interesting is that this really was a concern for me. But we did break up and I went right on compiling this list of movies and researching them and arranging them in just the right order even though there was no longer anyone for me to edify and enlighten.
And I'm still working on it today with a list 14 pages long and a DVD collection in the neighborhood of 900 movies beginning with One Million Years B.C. and ending with the Star Trek films. Currently I'm perfecting the Westerns which are particularly tricky to place so while I'm watching them I'm on a vigilant lookout for newspaper headlines or telegraphs which might allow a glimpse of a date. Otherwise I must resort to analyzing what kinds of pistols they're using or researching what year such and such a western town first gained railroad accessibility. Recently I watched Jubal in which a cowboy is worried about his Sears and Roebuck fiddle and because Sears didn't add Roebuck until 1893 I felt this was a good clue, but the characters kept referring to Wyoming as a territory which puzzled me because they became a state in 1890. Now, I ask you, who else in this world do you think has ever struggled with this contradiction? Clearly this cowboy could not have guessed in 1889 that four years later Sears would be come Sears and Roebuck, but why in 1893 would people still be referring to Wyoming as a territory?
So this is my Cinementalic Disorder. Just as a dentist cannot look at a smile without analyzing how it could be orthodontically corrected, likewise I cannot watch a movie without deconstructing it for a chronological setting. Avatar, for example, takes place in August of 2154. See what I mean?
