On Thursday, I watched Edward Scissorhands for literally about the thousandth time. Naturally I already could've recited it in my sleep, and I chose to rewatch it then to mark receiving a T-shirt featuring it (which I obviously wore in the process). Even so, and I still can't quite establish why, I wasn't prepared for how much more it affected me this time. It's always made me cry, and in two scenes, but after this viewing I was also deeply angry. I ended up standing in my kitchen doorway, reflecting on some of my own unpleasant childhood experiences for a few minutes before making a post in a Facebook group about unabashedly angry films. Because that was my sudden realisation: despite primarily being a romantic fantasy, there's also a certain empathetic rage just coursing through it as Tim Burton made the protagonist semi-autobiographical.
Anyway, I don't love it any less now (I never will), but that was an out-of-body experience for me and it's left me contemplating how, and how often or rarely, we see something new in something very old or familiar, and what that observation can mean for how we perceive the thing overall. Or, for that matter, whether we really let ourselves change our perceptions enough. But I shouldn't even pretend to know the answers to those conundrums; I often don't even know how my brain works, never mind others' brains.
The closest answer I feel I can leave you with here is this: neuroplasticity is evidently real, and certainly regarding artistic interpretation.
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