Rosebud...

A quick blog about one of my favorite films of all time--Citizen Kane. Actually, I just finished watching it on this snow-filled Saturday night with two friends who happened to have rented it on Netflix. I acknowledge that many of you may have already seen this film, but if you haven't, it's an extraordinary film that contested the work of the then-famous and powerful Hollywood mogul William Randolph Hearst.

The first time I saw the film was while I was an undergraduate--it was part of an undergraduate course in leadership that I was enrolled in. The film is extremely personally meaningful, if for no other reason that I hope to never lose the true joys in my own life (my own "Rosebuds") and to be wary of those things (material success, popularity success, financial successes) which seem so alluring but never seem to bring real happiness.

Without giving the plot away, Citizen Kane is a film where the main character, Charles Foster Kane, is a media mogul who boasts that "People will think what I tell them to think!" and "You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war!" His newspaper, The New York Inquirer, begins with ideal aspirations, but as time moves on, it becomes a platform for Kane's own grandstanding and pursuit of greatness--indeed, he works less and less to report the news and more and more to tell his audiences what the news is--or what he thinks they should think. Ultimately, Kane's life is enveloped by loneliness as his own possessions fail to provide happiness and his friends can no longer be won over with cheap charisma or money.



The film itself is a loosely based criticism of the real-life media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who had a reputation for manipulating people in order to create news. He himself went to no end to try and have the movie blocked and the negatives destroyed, as its portrayal of him angered him. As for a study on power, image, the understandings we get through the media and the motives of those behind the media, it's a very impressive piece.

I do not want to say too much more, but if you're reading this and you have not seen the film, it is a must-see. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033467/

John Edwin Silvia