For a person, the more you know, the stranger it is.
A movie, the more times I have seen it, the more mysterious it feels.
Citizen Kane is one such film.
It seems to be a biographical reminiscence film composed of memories, but when you think about it, it is not like this at all:
All the fragments are narrated from the perspective of a third party, and the Kane in their eyes constitutes the whole "truth".
But when combined, this mysterious and greater character, which is more difficult to say, becomes more vague and transparent, and wanders outside of time.
The film begins with a pretentious obituary, but it is the "Rose Bud" that really kicks off the story.
It may represent something he has not received, or something he has lost, and in any case, the word means nothing.
If you put this line together with the phrase that someone said while counting the mountains of treasures in Kane's warehouse, which sounded light and fleeting, the whole story became a little clearer:
I don't think any one word can sum up a person's life.
Indeed, just as an angle cannot parse "Citizen Kane" at all, and kane cannot be said in a single sentence.
At the last moment of knowing the "rose bud", the key evidence was thrown into the raging fire.
Even if you make a slight assumption: even if the sleigh is discovered, even if everyone traces the roots and knows that this is a combination of keywords from childhood, mother, hometown, etc., what can be done?
Even if everyone knows that Kane, who has achieved fame and legend in his life, the deepest regrets and pains in his heart are left in the original family, and the hope and security he has pursued all his life are also there, will those who have lost friends, sad lovers, people who misunderstand him, and people who define him from just a few words change their minds?
Further, even if the sleigh is discovered, the whole meaning it can assume is only to interpret the origin of the "rose bud", but it cannot explain the meaning of the word.
Even if you end up being "worried about giving new words", it is from someone else's mouth.
Think about it, everyone is doing it themselves, leaving it to others to say.
Let's make another assumption: Kane is still alive and the "rose bud" is known to everyone.
That means that there is an answer to this question that runs through the film?
Even Kane himself didn't know what he was after in this life.
Just like he has never understood how to express love, how to accept love, how to face up to his pursuit of love, and then panic after getting it.
One more interesting point.
Citizen Kane has the longest flash frontage in the history of cinema.
The first half of Mr. Thatcher's year-end message was "Merry Christmas" and the second half was "Happy New Year" – a full 20 years apart.
If we talk about it from the perspective of our own experience and the comments of others: the life we have tried our best to go through may be just three words or two words in the mouths of others and future generations.
If we look at it from a macro temporal point of view: the fate of legendary experiences, people and sentient beings is the same - it is only a part of history, nothing more.
But after watching it a few times, I found that the line that impressed me the most was actually not very much related to Kane.
It was Mr. Bernstein who said in the face of the reporter's insistence:
A man tends to remember a lot of things that you think he won't remember.
(The latter is a description of a chance encounter with a girl with an umbrella in white for a second but remembering her life)
In this way, the sleigh at the end of the movie may also be a blindfold left by the movie.
Perhaps "Rosebud" has nothing to do with the important scenes that appear in the film, and the answer may be hidden in some fleeting shot or inconspicuous scene.
Perhaps, there is no answer.
Because he knows that he doesn't know, Kane is gone, and the living people's perception of him will not change in any way.