I love movies not because they’re like life but because they aren’t. The only thing that is true of movies and life is that they both have to end. I want them most when they are uncanny replicas of life—moments and experiences used like elements rather than reflections. They warp under being watched.

I can rewatch a movie and find my understanding of it totally changed; remembering memories again and again has the effect of making them seem less trustworthy. I have a tendency to see what I like as complete and what I don’t like as unfinished, even though I think it should be the reverse. It’s the same way that sometimes I talk to a person I once loved and wish I could feel that love for them again. I try to see them under different lights, recall them sitting in different chairs, previous apartments, between subway stops—scenes from a time when I used to notice how they crossed their legs at the knee, or held a pen, before I noticed what I didn’t like or couldn’t trust. Trying to make them the same as I remember them would require forgetting who they are in the moment. When I tell someone to watch a certain movie I am mostly letting them know something that I am almost ready to say.