As a young adult, armed with newfound skepticism and a thirst for meaning, the film transformed. Kane was no longer an untouchable titan but a profoundly lonely figure, consumed by ambition and yearning. The montage sequences and overlapping dialogue revealed layers of psychological complexity and fractured identity I had never noticed before. It became a parable on the futility of power and the chimeric nature of happiness.

Now, as a middle-aged Loser who sucks at writing, embittered by unfulfilled dreams and the weight of squandered time, I see Citizen Kane differently still. Kane isn’t merely ambitious—he’s a man haunted by what he’s lost, clutching at fragments of the past like his forgotten "Rosebud." Each viewing is almost painful, an echo of my own self-deceptions. Watching it now feels like looking into a cracked mirror, recognizing in Kane not just a tragic hero, but a kindred spirit of failure.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5603179&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910#48142553)

But in young adulthood, the narrative unfolded differently: Michael was no longer the destined ruler but a man ensnared in a battle between two irreconcilable selves—his Italian blood, coursing with vendetta and primal loyalty, and his American ambition, yearning to sever ancestral ties and forge a sanitized, assimilated identity. Michael wasn’t merely consolidating power but striving to escape the inescapable gravity of his own lineage. His actions seemed neither fully voluntary nor entirely coerced. The Corleone family’s saga became a study in a split subjectivity, an impossible balancing act between Old World tradition and New World legitimacy.

And now, in middle age, it is clear that Michael’s struggle was doomed from inception—not because of some personal flaw, but because the very society he sought to penetrate is structured to exclude. America, despite its mythos of opportunity and mobility, is a latticework of inviolable Cliques: the Jock, the Prep, the Nerd, and a host of others—rigid social archetypes that map onto every strata of life. No matter how ruthlessly he pursued legitimacy, Michael could never truly enter these circles because, for the immigrant, ethnicity is a meta-clique, an indelible stain that renders assimilation forever a mirage. To the WASP elite he sought to emulate, Michael was never a businessman—he was a Sicilian masquerading in a three-piece suit, forever marked by an inextricable "otherness." The tragedy, then, isn’t simply that Michael loses his soul or his family; it’s that he misreads the nature of power itself. In seeking to transform his clan from a “family” into a corporation, he ignores that the American system is not a meritocracy, but a patchwork of self-contained social codes and barriers— where true acceptance is predicated not on wealth or influence but on belonging. His Sicilian roots, which he tries to transcend, are precisely what define and entrap him, rendering every attempt to assimilate a grotesque mimicry as he is condemned to wander forever outside the citadel of American identity, neither fully insider nor outsider—a king in exile within his own kingdom.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5603179&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910#48142572)

As an older man, I just watch it for the car crash.

Same thing can be said for Cruel Intentions really.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5603179&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910#48142577)