So there I was, sitting on my couch, folding laundry and flipping channels (seeing as we have neither cable nor satellite, my choices are rather limited… and for that I am truly grateful!) Turns out CBS is showing the AFI awards for the top 100 movies of all times. Sucker that I am for mindless TV lists when I’m folding laundry, I watched for about a half hour or so.
Turns out I am rather movie illiterate.
Should I be worried about this? Should I feel deprived that I have never seen Annie Hall, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Apocalypse Now, or Bridge Over the River Kwai?
How about All About Eve, Godfather II, M*A*S*H, or Dr. Strangelove?
I’ve seen plenty on the list, of course, and as I was watching this show I was wondering if I could consider myself “enriched” for having seen them. There’s plenty to be said for reading the classics, but what can be said for seeing the “classic” movies? Movies, at times, can be just as “life changing” as influential books, I suppose. At their greatest they are art forms used by human beings to convey a noble message. The fact that they are visual rather than words on the page doesn’t mean that they can’t enrich the mind like classic artwork or a play. I have come away from many movies finding myself thinking of things in a new way…
Still, free time is short and, being the book lover that I am, I would much rather dive into the written classics… but what do you think? Am I missing out on anything other than a few cultural references and a Trivial Pursuit question or two?