Deep film. Still beautiful after several views

Rating: 9/10 (25 November 2013)

Watched this again recently. Now I'm nearer Lester's age, I look at the film from a different angle (you could say) and it's still marvelous.
Plenty of comedy here, but there are also lots of subtle points about "normality", meaningless jobs, beauty.
Each one of these ideas could take up a film in themselves. We could spend all day in the forums discussing different sorts of normality - how people tend to all think their family is uniquely crazy, how Angela is terrified of being normal, how Ricki is comfortable with not being normal, how the Burnhams *pretend* to normality. But one film can only say so much in a few brush strokes, and AB does it wonderfully.
The film has a strange take on beauty, which Ricky sees in many unlikely places, including in death - as he tries to explain. I occasionally think that - though, as we get older, we're incredibly bored with this world and hardly see things properly at all - if you look at things in the right way, or for the first time, every moment is quite incredibly breathtaking. I expressed that poorly, but it's a powerful message for me.
You're left wondering about these people. How did they get that way? What happened next? A sequel or prequel would perhaps spoil it.
Finally, the soundtrack is one of the best I've heard - very important to me from a film.
I wish I could erase all memory of this film, and watch it anew in a big, hushed cinema with excellent sound, sitting next to someone I loved.