Should you watch a film you have already seen or pick a new one? The same question can be asked of books too, but I think it's particularly relevant for films, because it takes a lot less time to watch a film than to read a book.
One way of evaluating a piece of content is how much it affects the consumer's mind. You may learn how to do something, or you may gain a deeper understanding of reality, or you may become aware of things you didn't know about yourself. In any case, the impact depends on both the content and the mind: the book you read may contain no new information for you, but it could be eye-opening to someone else; the same film would be appreciated differently if you had watched 10 years ago or if you watch it now, because no man ever watches the same film twice.
In a way, the more changes per hour your mind undergoes when you watch a film, the better that film is. It's wonderful when you finish a film and feel that you can now see the world in a slightly different light. That's the power of art: expanding the mind's horizons.
Films may take a while to be digested. Sometimes the film seems good when you finish it; but then later you barely even remember having seen it. I think this is the mind's way of telling you that the film was no good. Sometimes the opposite happens: you are not sure about the film when you watch it, but it keeps growing on you. Good movie, says the mind.
Of course, life is not just about learning, it's also about feeling. If you watch a comedy and it actually makes you laugh, then it doesn't matter at all if it will produce any long-term impact. That's it, you laughed, it felt good, end of story. But that is a different way of evaluating a film, and I'm not talking about that here.
The depth of a film, to me, is precisely how much value you can get from it, especially when watching it more than once. A shallow film won't bring you much value even the first time you see it; some films bring you a reasonable amount of value the first time you watch them, but it's not worth it to see them again; deep films keep on giving: you keep getting more value as you watch them again and again.
So, should you watch a film you have already seen or should you pick a new one?
One rational answer is: you should extract as much value as you can, which means rewatching films that you think are deep enough to warrant a second or third round; and watch new films when you think they will probably produce more value than rewatching the ones you already know. It's a risky business, of course, because you have some understanding of the depth of the movies you have seen, but it's much harder to evaluate the depth of unseen movies, even after reading reviews and recommendations.
This means that you should not count how many films you have seen, but how many times you have watched films, and a really important measure for evaluating a film is how many times you have seen it and your willingness to see it again.
2025-05-14