About every four years, also

How often should a person watch his/her favorite movie of all time?

I guess my own answer to that is “about every four years.”

While writing about another every-four-year tradition this past weekend – watching a terrible movie on February 29^th – I noticed that there’s something else I’ve been doing every four years, namely, watching Raising Arizona.

Raising Arizona is my #1 movie on Flickchart, and has been for some time … well, at least four years, but I think more like six or even eight.

I watched it on Saturday night for a couple reasons:

1. When I was away the night before with a friend, he had a playlist going that had the song “Down in the Willow Garden” on it. If that title does not immediately ring a bell, it’s the lullaby Ed sings to Nathan Jr., with the lyrics “For I did murder that dear little girl/whose name was Rose Connelly.” Not only is the song used hauntingly there, but it returns in the score at the very end, and possibly one other time. Hearing the song was enough to get the juices flowing for another viewing.

2. When I decided not to try to watch another terrible movie on Saturday, having liked the terrible movie I watched that morning, I thought “If not the worst, why not watch the best?"

It wasn’t until later that I realized there was possibly something cosmic informing this decision, a natural return in a cycle of rewatches of my favorite movie.

When I added it to my rewatches list on Letterboxd, I noticed the last three dates I had seen Raising Arizona. I’ll include this rewatch in that date list as well, so it’s all the more obvious what kind of machine-like regularity I’m on with this film:

2/29/2020

3/13/2016

3/3/2012

6/2007

And before that, I did not keep track of rewatches. (And don’t have the specific date in 2007 because at that time, I only kept track of the month.)

The last three are remarkable in their consistency, all within a two-week period from the end of February, two of which were only four days apart. And exactly four years apart in each case. What are the odds of that, without being premeditated?

The psychology of late February/early March seems clear. At that point I’m still in the immediate afterglow of finalizing my year-end rankings, after which point I can return to the types of viewings I had been neglecting when I was cramming in movies from the previous year. Watching a favorite movie, just because you can, is a good way for a person to celebrate their new viewing freedom.

I don’t recall the circumstances of watching the movie in June of 2007, though I suppose it was another “it’s just time” viewing, and that perhaps it was about four years after the viewing before that.

Now, you might think that a person should watch their favorite movie more frequently than once every four years. Is it really your favorite movie if you watch it only as often as we elect a new president? There are movies I like less that I watch on average maybe every two years. (And it’s not lost on me that the viewings came during presidential election years, not to mention years of Summer Olympics, not to mention leap years, though I do think all those things are just coincidences.)

I’d argue “yes,” because a favorite movie should also be special. You don’t want to spoil it by watching it too much. It’s one of the reasons I pumped the brakes on my Tangled viewings as the last decade went along. I didn’t want to give Tangled the chance of being something my kids watched on repeat, creating the conditions where it could annoy me rather than charm me. (Alas, my kids don’t watch any movies on repeat anymore – it’s all YouTube, all the time.)

But you don’t want to let too much time elapse between viewings, because then you feel like your relationship with the movie is suffering. You want to maintain that relationship, your ability to quote it with ease, your memory of exact gestures and moments that vaulted it to #1 in the first place. Of which there are many in Raising Arizona. In fact, it’s a movie comprised of quotes, gestures and moments, perhaps more so that most.

I’m sure there’s been critical study of this idea, but it makes me wonder if there is something ideal about that four-year span that also helps determine how often we should elect presidents and how often we should watch Usain Bolt sprint. The leap day gives us an astronomical explanation, but is there something also in the human psyche that responds to four-year intervals? Or – to blow your mind even more – is whatever is in the human psyche that responds to four-year intervals also impacted by the cosmos?

Either way, I’m a Raising Arizona recidivist – “repeat offender.” I endure four-year sentences without it and then allow myself another little taste of the sublime.

It’s a system that works for me.