My friend for over 30 years

Rating: 10/10 (11 July 2016)

I have watched a lot of movies. I probably watch 8 to 10 a week, thanks to Netflix. I am a fan of great movies and unintentionally horrible movies. There are many movies that have given me great joy over the years. Many are like girlfriends. You become infatuated with them and for a brief moment, they are the most beautiful thing in the world. But, there is only one movie that has been my constant friend and companion for a large part of my life, and that is Once Upon A Time in America.
Just a few bars of Deborah's Theme can bring the whole movie back to me. In general I don't like to watch a movie more than once. Some, I will rewatch after 10 or 15 years, to see them at a different stage in my life. OUTIA is the only movie that I could watch an infinite amount of times.
Why is this so? This movie contains every important human emotion, characteristic and relationship. It is malleable. It is anything you want it to be. It is a different movie to me than it is to anybody else, even, if they too, think it is the best movie ever made.
It is a different movie, every time I watch it, so, therefore, never repetitive.
It is instructional. It tells the price of wasting your life, and all the possible ways you can waste it. In this way, it is a highly moral movie.
It is allegorical and real at the same time. The characters reflect the great themes of classical literature but are fully fleshed out human beings that have a possible existence in some possible universe.
What is the plot? Who cares? The plot is imperfect human existence in an imperfect world and the universal joke of "being".