To see or not to see Citizen Kane. That is the question. Seeing Citizen Kane is the equivalent of having an academic degree. It is a guarantee to be able to be right in any discussion about cinema, about art, even about any facet of life.
Watching Citizen Kane is not just anything. Watching Citizen Kane is no small feat. To see Citizen Kane is not a task for any mortal being.
Seeing Citizen Kane, a difficult decision. Will I see it? Will I not see it? Will I become a pedant forever? Will I be a worse person? I don't think I'm ready to see Citizen Kane in my 20s. I don't think I will be in my 30s either. I don't think I will be in my 40s either.
Indeed, has anyone ever been? Has anyone ever known anyone who, despite possessing the knowledge of such a pandora's box, has used that power responsibly and not abused it? Can any human being face such a cinematic monstrosity without a prior, almost mystical preparation?
Orson Welles created this piece without perhaps knowing that he was writing a bible for later generations. Now Citizen Kane is the holy grail of film culture.
It is everything, and everything beside it is nothing.
An immensity, which being unknown is great and promising. It's scary to uncover it. The unknown is always scary. Expectation plays a horrible role. Things hardly ever turn out as we expect them to. Citizen Kane was probably never the piece Orson Welles imagined it would be. I don't think Citizen Kane is the film I expect it to be either, I don't know at the moment. At the moment I don't know, and not knowing that makes me write this.
Writing about Citizen Kane is like writing about nothing. And writing about nothingness is, in the end, writing. Because all of us who write about something, we write on the nothingness. We take a blank page, nothingness, and we fill it with things. We write onside nothing, about nothingness. Above all, about nothing.
Citizen Kane can be everything, but at the moment it is nothing. It is nothing because I haven't seen it yet.
To see or not to see Citizen Kane. To be something or to be nothing.
