My Favourite Film: Brief Encounter

I recently re-watched one of my favourite films, Brief Encounter, for the third time. I think that I'd actually go as far as to say that this is my favourite film now. Every time I watch it I feel like I'm seeing something different in it. Maybe it's because there have been large gaps between viewings, or maybe because I've been in pretty different life stages whilst watching it each time, but the thing that astonishes me about this film is the way the emotional depth catches me differently each time. It's like a kaleidoscope of emotive cinema.

I'm not sure how old I was when I first watched it. I'm pretty sure I was a teenager, idly watching Film4 in the day time, but I couldn't pinpoint it much further than that. Regardless of the details, I was a naive adolescent vaguely trying to make sense of my own fumbling humanity, and seeing this film for the first time shook me to my core. The exquisite exploration of secret pain gripped me like nothing had ever done before in a film, and watching Laura hopelessly and desperately struggle to cling on to her senses and her life, often wordlessly, felt incredible. It was like being cut open in the most mesmerising, distant way.

If any element of Brief Encounter stands out above the rest, it's probably the way expressions alone are used so well to communicate the turmoil of our protagonist. Watching Laura's grief-stricken face in so many generous close ups is like seeing into a friend's heart so totally and absolutely. The intimacy between Laura and the audience even in wider shots and shots involving other characters is so thick.

I think that whilst I couldn't relate to the direct plot of doomed and forbidden love as such as a teenager, it was the emotional intensity, the depth of connection and despair, the swirling, beating heart just under the floorboards of the entire production, that curled itself completely around me and drew me in. I like a lot of films, and I love some, but nothing comes close to how much I cherish this one, in all its closely detailed pain.

Somehow it's a film that feels like it will grow with me. Every time I watch it, it feels like there is something more there. Something that was hiding in the train station's shadows. Something washing under the bridge. The kaleidoscope shifts, and the train departs.