The movie always had some kind of allure. Maybe it was American. Maybe it was Beauty. Maybe it was the singular rose on a bare navel. I just remember how, years ago, my mom had implored me in hushed tones not to watch it because it depicted how Americans really are deep down inside.
I of course failed to see how that was a bad thing. I watched it and enjoyed it immensely, though the only thing that really stuck with me was the singular plastic bag twirling amongst the leaves, in a dance with the wind. Other than that I didn't remember much.
Curiously though, I recently got the urge to rewatch it. And I did, staying up late one night. And it was so incredibly beautiful, not just for how the characters found happiness through dysfunction but for how it challenged the accepted notions of beauty, that something even as graphic as Lester's broken cranium oozing blood solicited peace and not horror.
But what the movie really did was allow me to be excited for when I fall in love. Because I can see now that someday, someone like Ricky Fitts will sneak me into his father's forbidden study to show me some Third Reich memorabilia, and I will look at him talking and all of a sudden I will be home.