More to Citizen Kane than meets the eye...yet more direct than the modern crap covering screens

Rating: Null/10 (3 December 2004)

Citizen Kane was one of the first movies to portray the American Dream as anything less than attractive. As a child, Kane is fully happy as he plays in the snow outside the family's home, even though his parents own a boarding house and are quite poor. He has no playmates but is content to be alone because peace and security are just inside the house's walls. When Thatcher removes Kane from this place, he's given what seems like the American dreamâ'financial affluence and material luxury. To most this would seem to be a piece of Heaven blessing them with good fortune for a happy life. However, Kane finds that those things don't make him pleased, and the exchange of emotional security for financial security is ultimately unfulfilling. The American dream is an empty, hollow shell for Kane. As an adult, Kane uses his money and power not to build his own happiness but to either buy love or make others as miserable as he is. When one watches the movie it seems that his purchasing of the newspaper was a fun venture. But if you look closer into the reality of the film, the newspaper was simply a means of touching thousands of people, and ultimately gaining their affection. Kane's wealth isolates him from others throughout the years, and his life ends in loneliness at Xanadu. He dies surrounded only by his possessions, poor substitutions for true companions. His last word is "Rosebud." Child hood and that which he missed out on. "I could have been great man without all of this money."