Citizen KaneRocky Peterson9.9· March 8, 2024FollowI feel like this movie’s place in culture mirrors that of Kane himself, so towering and monolithic that many have trouble figuring out how to approach it on a human level. But while there’s plenty to be said about how this revolutionized cinematic language and narrative structure and yada yada yada, truthfully, whenever I watch it, the movie’s Importance™️ couldn’t be further from my mind. What is on my mind is the way it looks, the way it moves, the way it feels; expressive, stylized images flashing past in stream-of-consciousness rhythm in service of a non-linear, unreliably narrated mystery-style character portrait that is, among many other things, about how the corrupting forces of wealth and power and American exceptionalism thrust upon a person at the right stage in life render them fundamentally unable to form truly meaningful connections as they move through the world. One wonders what kind of person Charles Foster Kane would’ve turned out to be had he stayed in his old life, had been allowed to keep playing with his Rosebud to his heart’s content; all we know is that the person he did become, after spending his final years wandering the yawning halls of an externalized monument to the empty excess of his life and personal relationships, wondered the same in his final moments. Of course, as the movie’s penultimate scene tells us, that’s not the whole of it, because the whole of it is fundamentally unknowable. Even the significance of Rosebud’s identity, a symbol of the moment his life changed forever, is only known to us viewers; everyone who would understand that in the film itself is dead by the time the main action of the story takes place. But even we never see his life from his perspective. What else is lost in the weeds, between the scenes? Is it possible to know any other person, let alone an iconic one, who lived thousands of lives through thousands of sets of eyes? All I’ll personally say with regard to its reputation is: I think the idea of a “greatest movie of all time” is fundamentally kind of dumb, but if we’re going to have something close to a consensus pick, well… we could do a whole lot worse than this. Also fuck you the Criterion cover is good.CommentsSign in to react and join the conversation.Sign inGet the appSee all Rocky's reviews for Citizen Kane (2)First watch9.9December 4, 2019Rewatch 19.9March 8, 2024