She was having none of it.
Imagine my shock in the early morning of a mostly-forgotten day in 2007. I was researching in the library net room when my friend barged in and talked about a horrible movie she saw Sunday night with her friends.
She ranted away, recounting how boring and uneventful this horror film was. She continued her unbashful bashing, remembering the many times she and her friends laughed at the film's attempts at jump scares, adding that they were the stupidest effects she had seen (at that point) in her life.
Before the bell rang for the first class, she concluded her impromptu movie review with the brutality that would have made Owen Gleiberman blush: Kalaw-ay law-ay gid ya, avoid! Her dismissal of the movie made me curious.
A month later, I watched the film in question. She was right: the film was weird, boring, and unnecessarily long. She, like many of my peers, was anticipating the more immersive horrors of films like “The Ring” (1998). The film she bashed? “Retribution” (2006).
The director? Just Cannes winner, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. His 1997 movie “Cure” was praised by Martin Scorsese and is widely regarded as one of the best horror films.
Another High School memory comes crashing down. It's my second year English class, and the topic is Asian Literature.
My classmates and I have an assigned novel to ponder for the rest of the month. Nobody was interested: between this book and the endless distractions of high school (cheering, the diabolical threat of Geometry, etc.), the former had to give way.
Ignoring this book was bad enough; we had to mock it, too. We made fun of its characters and what we thought was tacky sexuality. Also, having a classmate who shared a last name with one of the promiscuous characters was the cherry on top of the icing. The book was “Thousand Cranes.” The author? Why, it's just Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. We couldn't have cared less.
Today, I cherish both of those works as well as their authors. Time and experience have increased my appreciation for their aesthetic and philosophical content.
The Kurosawa movie that was boring? It was more than just a horror film; it was a meditation on collective guilt and the reluctance to accept responsibility for one's actions. The book we made fun of for its sexuality and weird rituals? It was about the remarkable struggle of human desire in the face of fate and tradition. These themes went unnoticed by our juvenile minds.
Was there a more suitable attitude toward these pieces, in retrospect? Maybe not. We are dynamic beings, always susceptible to change brought about by life. Perhaps I lacked the necessary experience to relate to and connect with these pieces. After a decade and a thorough re-watching/re-reading, I can.
Still, I wish I had appreciated these works earlier.
But a late appreciation is better than no appreciation at all. Here it is, in all its sincerity.*
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Tomas Gerardo Araneta's passion is writing what interests him the most. Those things include movies, books, and other unnoticed social phenomena.