I think in order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of their original relationship with the whole. In the case of a book one can unhinge it, so to speak, physically, reducing it to a series of excerpts. A movie on the contrary, must be already ramshackle, rickety, unhinged in itself.
A perfect movie, since it cannot be reread every time we want, from the point we choose, as happens with a book, remains in our memory as a whole, in the form of a central idea or emotion; only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, it's glorious ricketiness.
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Each actor repeats a part played on other occasions and because human beings live not "real" life but life as stereotypically portrayed in previous films.
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Two clichés make us laugh because but a hundred clichés move us because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion.
Just as the extreme of pain meets sensual pleasure, and the extreme of perversion borders on mystical energy, so too the extreme of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the Sublime.
Travels in Hyperreality
Umberto Eco
1984
