esrosedotblog

REVISE

Before I left for my trip, I enjoyed watching the film BREAKING AWAY. At the end of my little review, I said that I would give it a 3 out of Netflix5. Almost instantly, it seemed, I received and aggrieved email from an ardent fan of the picture who was stunned that I had not given it the highest rating. "The best bike movie I have ever seen".

I tried, as nicely as I could, to point out that the ratings are not about 'bike pictures' and that, if they were, I too would give BREAKING AWAY a 5. I would even give it a 5 if we considered motorcycle pictures in the category.

As a sop, I made a rare concession: I would reconsider my rating over the next several days. I did. While in the car, driving to Arizona, lines from the film kept coming into my head ('Bon giorno poppa"!) and situations repeated themselves in short loops (Dennis Quaid keeps jumping into the water at the quarry). Heartbreaking disappointments kept recurring (the loss of the race against the 'Ities'); funny incidents kept bubbling to the surface (the renaming of the cat to Fellini); poignant events continued to bring burning eyes (the revelation that our boy is just a cutter to his dream girl) and, of course, the exciting moments of the final race.

After all that, I gotta give it a 4. Any movie that hangs on that hard, has to be very good. I have given a 4 to pictures I can't remember much of. That is the problem with all reviews, isn't it? They are written too soon. What seems good, or bad, changes with time. The conciousness is independent of the intellect. I think that I wrote the review out of my head and the film kept its hold on my heart. Sigh. It is pretty good.