Has a film ever changed you?

[Smeraldina Rima]

Changed or perhaps made you think about something differently. Do films ever do this for you and can you put the change(s) into words? They often temporarily change moods but mood change might still be interesting if they change the kind you have a long time afterwards.

[bakabaka]

Harold and Maude changed my feelings about suicide - after watching it it was impossible to see suicide as anything but pure vanity and attention-seeking and not a solution. Which was possibly a life-saving switch for a suicidal teenager.

[Retinend]

Mike Leigh's films all had a very transformative impact on me. After I watched them, I had an enlarged sense of sympathy for my fellow man. They were the cinematic equivalent of coming down from MDMA: the moments of beauty and humour in the midst of impoverished (or otherwise imperfect) surroundings shone forth. I felt like I had been given a key to every house in the country. They really had this impact on me at the time (I was 21 years old) and I still have this warm and fuzzy feeling about them today, even though a lot of them are rather dark in content. They are all consoling and comforting, in their way (except for Naked).

My favourite Leigh film is Happy Go Lucky, and I immediately fell in love with Sally Hawkins's character in it. She is the person who takes a sad song and makes it better: she makes a drab suburban London backdrop into the centre of the world, merely by being in it. She talks the same way to everyone, because she is true to herself. She is the character of Rosie Driffield in the great but obscure novel Cakes and Ale. Watching that film (I know it was in 2012) marks a change in my attitude to life, from guarded and introspective, to being open and extraverted.

[Dusty Substance]

There Will Be Blood was a big one for me. It changed my mind that it is was still possible that "the best film ever" could still be made in my lifetime.

[nw83]

Walkabout - it was the first film that got me into 'proper' cinema, and made me realise that contrapuntal sounds and images could be combined to convey emotions far more effectively than in standard story-telling - next moment, I was eagerly looking through my dad's Halliwell's Film Guide, watching Moviedrome, staying up for all the Channel 4 foreign / extreme film seasons, etc.

Stroszek - this one is hard to explain. Ultimately I see it as an absurdist film, which powerfully (re)affirmed my then half-comprehended belief that life is shite, and you might as well not bother with the whole rat-race thing, but try see the bizarre humour in it all.

Betty Blue - well, I had my first wank to it, at a relatively old age. I might've never got around to it if it weren't for that.

[chocolate teapot]

Jaws changed me because of how I look at the sea and boats now. Today I saw a boat and thought can't believe (in Jaws) they went out on that sized boat to try and catch a great white shark. That might sound like a joke answer but it's not.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Does the crylaughing emoji count as a film?

[thecuriousorange]

Three men and a baby.

[Brundle-Fly]

Without a doubt, Hannah And Her Sisters (1986). I was age twenty and had hit a philosophical and spiritual brick wall. The Woody Allen character's epiphany changed me overnight. As did his epiphany at the end of Crimes And Misdemeanors, three years later.

What this says about me is anybody's guess?

[PlanktonSideburns]

You're a pedophile?

[Brundle-Fly]

You're a pedophile?

Touché

[PlanktonSideburns]

Sorry saw an opening

[Retinend]

Touché

That's what the kids said.

[touchingcloth]

Stroszek - this one is hard to explain. Ultimately I see it as an absurdist film, which powerfully (re)affirmed my then half-comprehended belief that life is shite, and you might as well not bother with the whole rat-race thing, but try see the bizarre humour in it all.

Incredible to think that this film was only 3 years old when Ian Curtis killed himself after watching it. It'd be like if Ricky Wilson killed himself tomorrow after watching Deadpool 2.

[Twit 2]

The Thin Red Line

Sat utterly dumbfounded by the prologue to this film, aged 21. Had never seen anything so beautiful, spiritual and meditative. The way the cinematography, music and voice over combined just clicked with me in every way. It completely changed me. I remember feeling two things at once - the joy of something beautiful in itself and the comfort that someone had thought of it and made it, that someone was capable of feeling and expressing these things. I felt less alone in the universe. I rewatched the film many times, but the prologue on the Melanesian island I must have rewatched daily over months. Miraculously beautiful, life-affirming stuff.

[xxxx xxx x xxx]

Sorry saw an opening

That's also what the kids said

[Butchers Blind]

Paths of Glory Think I was about 12 at the time when I first saw this and realised that war is shit and basically waged by cunts who care little for the human cost.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Thanks for the thoughtful answers.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom - Discussed recently in the "Non-New Films" thread but I was going through a stage of watching some of the more brutal cinema out there but after this felt genuinely quite broken, and didn't want to watch anything which was bleak or horrible ever again. I used to be a big fan of horror but even that is often too much for me now, unless it's over the top gory silliness which I still have a fondness for.

Toto Les Heros - The first film I saw with subtitles at the cinema, I wasn't sure how I'd get on with them but thankfully it wasn't an issue and it led to me regularly heading up to London to see more unusual fare. Plus it gave me a love for Jaco Van Dormael, he's a lazy bastard and since then has only made three other proper films but they're among my favourite ever movies.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Goodfellas - because it got me into films in a serious way and remains my favourite (in a similar way that Automatic for the People got me into music and remains my favourite).

Mulholland Dr. - completely changed my view of what movies can be, left me feeling utterly hypnotized for about a week after.

[Mr Banlon]

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom - Discussed recently in the "Non-New Films" thread but I was going through a stage of watching some of the more brutal cinema out there but after this felt genuinely quite broken, and didn't want to watch anything which was bleak or horrible ever again. I used to be a big fan of horror but even that is often too much for me now, unless it's over the top gory silliness which I still have a fondness for.

Toto Les Heros - The first film I saw with subtitles at the cinema, I wasn't sure how I'd get on with them but thankfully it wasn't an issue and it led to me regularly heading up to London to see more unusual fare. Plus it gave me a love for Jaco Van Dormael, he's a lazy bastard and since then has only made three other proper films but they're among my favourite ever movies.

John Waters discusses Salo and Pasolini on this weeks Bullseye (with Jesse Thorn)

[Head Gardener]

Andy Warhol's BAD - I saw it at a cinema in Northampton when I was 14 and was the first film to totally shock me, dunno if I was too young for the subject matter
but a lot of the imagery stuck with me for years, probably the same as a kid seeing something shocking on the net these days. I have not seen it again in over 40 years
and still remember scenes like

Spoiler alert

a baby chucked from the top floor of a tower block and it hitting the ground and exploding in blood

[close]

did my head in.

[colacentral]

I was already on a journey towards giving up meat, particularly as I was living opposite a farm when I saw it, but Babe pushed me significantly further along on that journey when I saw it just a few years ago. I always assumed it was standard mid 90s kiddie junk a la Flubber, Space Jam, etc, or Matilda at best. I now consider it one of my all time favourites.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Not in a watershed kind of way but I think there's definitely ones that keep rattling about in my head for some time after.

[Pseudopath]

I was already on a journey towards giving up meat, particularly as I was living opposite a farm when I saw it, but Babe pushed me significantly further along on that journey when I saw it just a few years ago. I always assumed it was standard mid 90s kiddie junk a la Flubber, Space Jam, etc, or Matilda at best. I now consider it one of my all time favourites.

Had the same effect on James Cromwell, so you're in good company.

[chveik]

I was already on a journey towards giving up meat, particularly as I was living opposite a farm when I saw it, but Babe pushed me significantly further along on that journey when I saw it just a few years ago. I always assumed it was standard mid 90s kiddie junk a la Flubber, Space Jam, etc, or Matilda at best. I now consider it one of my all time favourites.

it was the wonder showzen pilot for me

[non capisco]

John Waters discusses Salo and Pasolini on this weeks Bullseye (with Jesse Thorn)

Genuinely just misread that as Jim Bowen discusses Salo and Pasolini on this weeks Bullseye.

^Aside from that shite contribution from yours truly, this is a cracking thread so far.

[peanutbutter]

Radio Raheem's death in Do The Right Thing 100% got me, first viewing I was definitely initially concerned about the pizzeria and felt like a massive idiot when I read into it. Am kinda glad it got me before I was too old to intellectually understand the intent when viewing it.

Loadsa films that have widened my perspective, not in the same kind of smack in the face way that one did though.

I was already on a journey towards giving up meat, particularly as I was living opposite a farm when I saw it, but Babe pushed me significantly further along on that journey when I saw it just a few years ago. I always assumed it was standard mid 90s kiddie junk a la Flubber, Space Jam, etc, or Matilda at best. I now consider it one of my all time favourites.

Babe being my favourite film as a kid probably done a massive amount in terms of my ethical code. Kinda just took the good stuff I had instilled in me from religion that was fairly right but stuck to a thing I wasn't buying at all and gave me a means to bridge it. Like, it went from Jesus to some kind of amalgamation of Cromwell and the pig.

Although, I suspect the fact I grew up on a farm massively changes how I perceive a lot of it to. It never remotely seemed like a pro-vegetarian film to me and as far as I'm aware Miller has always pushed against the idea. It's more just using the example of having to face up to where meat comes from as a chance to play with themes like loss of innocence by making the viewer deal with the exact same stuff but not actively pushing an argument much beyond that? Which ultimately should have a far stronger and more wide reaching lingering effect than if it were just "EATING MEAT BAD", I suspect?

[Dex Sawash]

Quadrophenia was the film that allowed me to hear the soundtrack as an integral element. Never was anything but some music during a film  before seeing it10ish years ago. I don't always absorb the music now but I know that I could hear it.

[notjosh]

The bit at the end of High Fidelity where he realises that every relationship is fraught with problems, and the only reason that other women can sometimes take over your head is because you only fantasise about the good bits and not the inevitable problems that would also come with them. That was an important thing for me to hear as a teenager.

I gave up eating pig for a year after seeing Babe as a kid, though I eventually went back to it. I think it probably had an impact on my later decision to go vegetarian though.