I've come back to mention a few others that hit different re-watching as an adult: Zulu, Khartoum, Kim, Gunga Din, and basically any other grand epic where the Brits are portrayed as gallant heroes battling uncivilzied local populations -- until you look at it in terms of colonialism and see the Brits as pompous captialists parroting government lines about their own greatness and glossing over the legitimate reasons the locals want the colonizers gone.

Unrelated: everyone watches the movie Falling Down as if the lead is our Hero, but try watching it (as I did) seeing him as the unhinged villian.

[–] redhorsejacket@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean, I guess there will always be people who comically miss the point of a given piece of media (e.g. the lionization of Al Pacino's Scarface, or "Born in the USA" playing at political rallies), but you make it sound like you've unlocked some secret meaning in the film by viewing Michael Douglas as a villain. However, that's not even the subtext of the movie, it's the text itself. Douglas says, practically to the camera (if I'm remembering correctly, it's been several years), "I'm the bad guy? When did that happen?".

Anyone who walked out of the movie thinking it was sympathetic to its protagonist wasn't paying attention. Again, I know these people exist, I'm just flummoxed by that fact.

[–] memfree@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago

Okay, I shouldn't have said 'everyone', but people in the theater cheered for him -- and when the movie let out, I heard people putting him in the hero role. I'm glad to hear a wider audience saw it as I did.

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