It is a mixture of being confused and being puzzled.It was invented by a film character, a fantasy person that doesn’t exist, a person that was created through words, computers and a voice. And when I think about this, I feel confuzzled. When I think about the fact that I’ve seen 40 films last month, I feel confuzzled. And when I try to understand and get hold of all the value in these films, in form of emotions, experiences, wisdom, I feel not confuzzled, but very confuzzled.
Have you ever been confuzzled because of movies? If you are a movie blogger, I bet you have. Ever since I started this blog in October 2010, my confuzzledness has been growing, as I have been watching more and more movies. I just topped 1,000 ratings on IMDB – a pretty confuzzling experience, I tell you. I feel glad, because I know I’ve seen many movies, and that my knowledge of this art is growing steadily. I have seen many wonderful films, incredible works of art, and I have gained insight in many things. On the other hand, I have been entertained. This may sound positive at first, but there is a tiny part of myself that feels bad about this, bad about spending hours being entertained – and that alone, mostly.Movie watching is an unsocial hobby. You can go to the cinema with your friends and family, but just how often do you actually do that? Personally, I go to the movies about every second week with my mom or friends, but that leaves two weeks in which I watch movies myself mostly. I sometimes sit at a party and think, „I wish I was at home watching a movie“, and then I have a bad conscience. But I have been thinking this through. And it’s not like I spend less time with other people due to movie watching, is what I’ve found out. What would I do if I didn’t watch a film almost every night? I’d probably be reading. Because, let’s face it, you don’t really meet your friends at night (except weekends). So I think, I hope, that I won’t feel bad and unsocial anymore – though maybe I exaggerated a little, I don’t feel bad very often actually. It’s just sometimes, you know, in between.
What furthermore confuzzles me, is the fact that I spend a big part my time writing about movies and then sharing these writings with lots of people I don’t know online. And the fact that people respond, and that I’m happy about every comment. And the fact that I get a little addicted to checking if there are any comments, and checking my blog stats. I don’t even know if you’re people or just computers. Maybe you’re stalkers.But you could think the same thing about me, commenting on your blogs. I’ve read so often that people want to stop the stats-checking and comment-addictedness, so I don’t feel alone. I’m still confuzzled, but I am getting better at seeing this whole project as a way to express my love for the art of film. You might think this is easy, but there have been times when I’ve been considering to close this blog, because I don’t see the point. I see that it makes me happy to read comments and discuss films with people, but I don’t see why I write stuff and spend hours on designing a ratings system or polishing the blog design or whatever. I should be thinking about what I want to do with my life, which career path I want to take, find out whether I'm better at acting or writing or calculating.
But as I said: I don’t want to stop. I know the point - there is a point - just sometimes I forget it. And then I see a great movie and I remember.
Confuzzling, isn’t it?