Why Films Are A Continuous Process

I think I am bold enough to call myself the revered 'cinephile' of my family, and even though there are times my father or my uncle joke about how I spend all my time watching movies(trust me I don't), they somewhat acknowledge my opinion and taste in cinema. 

 In my three years of serious consumption of cinema and television, I have noticed one common yet rather unnoticed thing: people sometimes change their perspective towards a film during rewatches of the same thing. Giving a popular example of how it takes 'multiple watches to understand a Nolan film', it is very much possible that it is exactly how Christopher Nolan wants his art to be understood. I mean, I understood Interstellar the very first time I watched it but it took me over 7 reruns in total to finally appreciate the grandeur of the cinematic masterpiece Nolan gave us. From the subtle references, to the few foreshadowing incidents with dialogues, it took me quite some time to understand it all. And I definitely did not regret investing my time to it.

 In my experience, the structure of a film somewhat represents an onion, in the many layers of development, story, plot, dialogues, acting and every other aspect a film holds. You cannot just go berserk and tear the film apart with your claws in one go; you have to peel it off, layer by layer, with great intricacy, great care. You have to try to understand how that seemingly insignificant dialogue wrecks the world inside the screen after a couple of hours or how a simple drawing on a refrigerator is going to save lives of everyone in the film later on. Everything a filmmaker and his team does, if it makes it through the cut, it usually contributes to the experience of the viewer, and it's very much justified how one would want their art to be viewed multiple times, whether for the sake of loving it or understanding it. Even while watching visual treats like Dune(2021) or Haider(2014), every rewatch of the movie refines how you think of it, how you notice a new beauty in dialogue or visuals, or how you start to value the work of the men behind the set a bit more.

 We have had many examples of such, from Interstellar(2014) to Shame(2013) to DevD.(2009). Sometimes, it's just the trademark of the filmmaker or sometimes, just a successful experiment. Theatre and cinema has been with us for ages, and its simplest motive is to entertain us. It's always going to contribute to the experience if you realise something in a rerun that you earlier did not.