rating: 10/10
this was my second time watching this but i feel compelled to write a review simply because it had much more of an impact on me this time around. maybe the person who said you find things at the right time in your life was on to something because the person i was four years ago wouldn't have connected to this movie the way i did now. i empathised so much more with neil this time around, and all the foreshadowing leading up to his unfortunate demise injected the experience with a sense of melancholy in the happy moments of this film because they were fleeting and they'd never get to be those innocent boys just running around their rooms and through the halls of welton again. i told abby that while i was watching this, i never really felt disconnected from the experience as i sometimes do—when i end up perceiving the actor instead of the character and it messes with my enjoyment of the story. here, i was so immersed in their world that i never stopped to think about any choices the actors might've made in their performance. that's the thing, this story doesn't feel like a performance—it feels lived, which makes it more special. it's a beautiful film with an equally beautiful story, and neil deserved better than he got. his fate is the most saddening part of this movie. i got emotional at a lot of points in this film. todd yelling neil's name as he runs to nothing in the snow was heartbreaking.
