Review of Citizen Kane (1941) by Scot C — 28 Sep 2014

Some years ago I got off on the wrong foot with Citizen Kane, so when Belgian television featured it last week, I decided to venture a trip down atonement lane. I'm sorry to say, though, that once again I didn't make it to the end of the lane in a way satisfactory to me.

Granted, this movie is a very special one for the time in which it was made. The subject matter is unusual, and the camera work is innovative. It's just that from beginning to end, I couldn't help being bugged by a major sense of "so what?".

The problem is that I could say many interpretative things about this movie in an attempt to explain it, but I am not sure if the maker actually meant for the viewer to see things this particular way.

Forced to analyse Citizen Kane and give a positive review about it, I would probably say something like the following: "Citizen Kane is about much more than just some person called Charles Foster Kane.

It is a story about a twentieth-century American citizen (hence the title of the movie), or, in a wider sense, about a particular aspect of the United States in aforementioned century. In this time period, the States were beginning to blossom as a powerful nation, with powerful, influential figures for whom the sky seemed the limit.

Modern media made such figures the focal point of blazing spotlights, and even when the lumen began to border on the absurd, the people still considered them as heroes. Now Citizen Kane does something interesting.

Instead of giving the audience such a much-wanted hero, it gives them an antihero, thereby putting this contemporary sense of American heroism into perspective. Charles Foster Kane is not a media tycoon who deserves much credit for the hard work he did.

He is not ye typical rags-to-riches man. His money was simply given to him, and everything he did with it ended in failure. Moreover, he is not a nice, engaging sort of man, either to his wives or to the people he worked with.

Looking at the grotesque proportions of the empire Xanadu the tycoon has made for himself, we cannot help but think that the American dream and its hero on the pedestal have been farted in the face big time.

The irony is complete when it turns out that the only thing in life Kane has ever really loved (enough to bestow with a pet name and refer to in this last words) is a toy from his childhood." Bearing all of this in mind, the movie seems very interesting.

Unfortunately the actual viewing experience is different. Citizen Kane come across as little more than a pretty dull rendering of a life story of some media tycoon. While watching it, I kept looking at the clock, which is by no means a good sign.

And finally, I found the final shot of Rosebud artistically appealing, but not very illuminating, given the angle it was filmed from. During the second watch, I had prior knowledge, but the first time I saw the movie, I kept wondering what that "shield thing" had to do with anything.

It was Peter "I just saved you two boobless hours" Griffin who had to explain to me it was a sled.