Many Levels...many times...

Several of my friends and I sat down tonight to watch the 2005 Pride and Prejudice together. Though I've seen it many many times before, I can watch it over and over again because it is just such a beautiful piece of art. The language, the adaptation, the music, the acting, the cinematography, the colors...and the symbolisim...

The more times I watch it, the more I can focus on things like symbolisim. Others have pointed out the meanings behind the birds in the films...and the weather. I paid particular attention to the weather this time. How it is stormy when the characters are emotionally upset, and particularily the dramatic, punctuating use of thunder in the first proposal scene between Lizzy and Darcy. (To be contrasted with the second proposal scene, which is the picture of tranquility.)

And, really, that's why we read or watch anything multiple times. It's because we can find new meanings, lines and words and emphasis's each time we go through.

The other reason is, of course, going back and greeting old friends and joining them once more on their adventures...but if it were exactly the same everytime it would grow boring. We have to approach art from differant angles- or, to put it simply, at differant periods in our lives.

So I suppose we all have our own particular "classics." Books that may never be regarded as classics by the world, and yet are to us because they continue to be relevant to us at whatever stage of life we are in. Because we can continue to find those meanings and those levels. Whether it's Pride and Prejudice, or Star Wars, or Peter Pan, we keep going back because we know we'll find something new. And, at the same time, something very old and very true.