i like movies: the coming of age film i've always wanted
the best thing i saw at tiff
Ever since I saw I Like Movies at TIFF, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. And whenever my dad and I talk about what we think the best movies of the year are, I’ll put its name in the ring. It doesn’t even yet have a proper poster on Letterboxd, but I doubt that before the end of the year, I’ll watch something that speaks to me more. I Like Movies is my perfect coming of age film because it is almost like a mirror. The main character and I are a little too similar. It is just like my own coming of age.
When we saw the late showing at the festival, it was introduced to us as a story about “a disease called early onset cinephilia”. I remember my dad jutting his elbow out into my side, motioning to me as he laughed. And then, before and after the movie, we got to hear Chandler Levack, the director, talk about her movie and answer questions. To see a female Canadian director was somewhat of an inspiring thing, and my dad and I hung around to see if we could get a word in with her, but somebody else rushed forward, and we walked out, not wanting to bother anyone. But, as we headed back and climbed into bed, it stuck with me deeply, clung to my bones, and even when we saw The Fabelmans and Empire of Light, nothing could compete. I Like Movies was it.
Now, if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen), a 17 year old with few friends and a deep love of movies and desire to make them. He gets a job at his local video store to try and make enough money to afford NYU tuition, and a strong and complicated relationship with the manager of the store begins to form. In early 2000s Burlington, Ontario, Lawrence dreams of bigger things. I grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, which is half an hour away from Burlington. In the plaza by my house, with the library and the grocery store, was a Blockbuster Video. I can’t remember my family ever renting something, but I do remember us going and browsing, and my dad with his stories of the movies he grew up on. He’d point to one and tell us how good is it. It was a plaza staple, sandwiched between a brunch restaurant and a TD Bank. Of course, the Blockbuster isn’t there anymore, and when we went back in September, it’s since been replaced by a falafel restaurant. I told my dad once it was too bad Blockbuster isn’t around anymore because it seems like the kind of place I could get a job.
Lawrence’s only friend is Matt Macarchuk (Percy Hynes White). They work on short films together for school, and they go to the movies together. Matt’s got overdue movies checked out on Lawrence’s account at the video store. While Matt’s love of movies is not like Lawrence’s, it is one of the things that brings them together. They’ve been friends a long time, and there’s a lot of love. I’ve known my childhood best friend for over a decade now, and she stills lives in Mississauga, right by the plaza that used to have the Blockbuster. When we get together, we watch shitty Netflix romcoms and remakes, and we giggle late into the night. I always figured that a movie had to be great to bring connection. But even with these shitty movies, we got closer and closer, laughing into each other’s shoulders, and putting on another instead of going to bed. It’s like cinema exists to connect people as much as it exists to tell stories, to bring them together. It’s done that for me and my dad, and for many of the friends I’ve made simply because of the movies we love. While it might not come until the very end of the movie, Lawrence does begin to find this connect through cinema, just as I have.
There is something about obsession that can cut you off from all that you know. It acts like window shutters, and nobody can see into your house. Lawrence is self obsessed, film obsessed, and he just wants to leave Burlington behind for New York City and NYU. I always found that my love of cinema allowed me to look at the world differently. Because I was affected by all these stories, because I was able to experience all kinds of stories, I saw people differently, and my view of the way things were changed. And now, I live off films. When my stomach growls, I know it is because I am hungry for movies. It’s become one of the only things I truly know, and one of the only things I could intelligently speak about. It absorbed me and I lived off it. The movie theater became a holy place, like a church to kneel down and pray in. In the movie, Lawrence goes to see Punch Drunk Love with Matt (declaring to the theater employee that they’re here for Punch Drunk Love, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, so everyone knows he’s there for the right reasons), and last December, I saw Licorce Pizza with my dad, and we (Lawrence and I) both couldn’t shut up about it. But this love, this act of only knowing movies, began to cut me off from some of the people I knew. And you can’t live only in dreams. I’ve tried, and to go through life sleepily, knowing almost nothing, is not a fun way to be. I had a therapist tell me that I needed to go out into the world and build relationships, and it would make me a better writer. I used to laugh at it, but it’s true, to know people can make your art better. Or at least, it did mine.
I’ve truly started to see myself as an artist. Within in last couple years, I’ve become much more confident in what I create. But when I was younger, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I bounced around dream jobs but that one stuck for a long time. Turns out, I’m as terrified of the ocean as I am in awe of it. And then film came along. And I couldn’t do anything else. I knew, and the documentary filmmaking class I took over the summer cemented it. I knew that this is what I was meant to do, as cheesy as that sounds, and I needed to do it. There is no back up plan. I have to be a filmmaker, or else I’ll be a failure and I’ll be nothing. When Lawrence speaks of NYU and being a director, it isn’t a maybe. It’s a certain thing, something he is going to do, and nobody can stop him. A dream, this dream, isn’t just a dream.
It’s the perfect coming of age movie because of all the ones I’ve seen, I’ve never related to one as much as I have with this one. The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Stand By Me are great and I adore them, but this one feels a little bit like it was made just for me. My kind of movie. Lawrence and I are almost a little too similar, a little too close for comfort. One of the only differences is I work at a movie theater, not a video store. But it means the same thing.
I Like Movies truly spoke to me. I’ve seen few movies with main character as similar to me as Lawrence. To live and die for cinema, staying up late to watch Stanley Kubrick movies, making my friends watch all the classic movies I love, because who doesn’t want to watch The Godfather Part II at a sleepover? Eat movies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I hope one day I’ll be able to make movies that resonate as deeply in other people as movies like this one do in me. My favourite movie of the year. If you ever get a chance to see it, I highly recommend you do.