Liberal Arts

...and I was right, I did have to watch it the regular way. In the same way that one listens to a song they love over and over, one of the main reasons that I return to this is to hear Richard Jenkins exclaim "Oh, it feels great!" as he pulls on his terrible shirt or Lizzie sing-song "You wanna burn books you don't like?" and I couldn't hear any of that over Mr. Radnor talking, so... The only life I know outside of academia was the year after college, half of which was COVID themed, so it doesn't surprise me that this is a comfort not only because of its romantic rhetoric but also because of its love/hate relationship with/dependence on school. How it's safe and boring and often impractical but necessary. It's a great metaphor for hiding in institutions and I don't know, media, from the future and all of its tedious surprises. Weird that people don't understand that the thesis of this movie is about being comfortable with and even looking forward to getting older and not fetishizing and wanting to learn from the young. The top review of this movie now (written by an absolute shallow dolt who I have finally blocked) seems to miss that all the frustrating instances cited are...meant to be frustrating? That the characters...are flawed? I refuse to get into it anymore and I promised I wouldn't write anything about this movie this year but here we are.