On the verge of a great milestone

Just after my son died in 2006 I devised several little projects designed to distract me from the pain of grief, but also as bargaining counters. My thought was "By the time I've completed that (whatever that was), I'll be all right."

One project I undertook was to see every one of the "Four star", or highest rated films in Halliwell's Film Guide. Do you know it? It's been my bible for nearly 40 years, and goes back over half a dozen editions.  Don't get me wrong. It's not that I necessary agree with every review he gives; indeed I sometimes disagree violently. And it would certainly be fair to say, as a friend once pointed out cogently,
"Halliwell likes a film with a beginning, a middle and an end, and in that order"
Nonetheless, on the whole I have great respect generally for his analysis and insight. For my money at least, his film guide is the best one out there.
Halliwell uses a rating system ranging from "No Stars at all", which as he explains in his introduction:
indicates a totally routine production or worse, such films may be watchable but at least are equally missable.
Next,  1 star, 
films of minor merit or failed giants,
2 stars, more competent productions and generally entertaining.
3 stars is awarded to films of a very high standard of professional excellence or great historical interest, 
and finally on to 4 stars", an accolade he reserves only for films that are:
"Outstanding in many ways, a milestone in cinema history, remarkable in acting, directing, writing, photography or some other aspect of technique."
He awards this Victoria Cross of  movie accolades sparingly, as we might expect.. Of the 23,000 plus movies reviewed, just 256 receive this exalted award. That means only 1% of the films listed achieve this highest rating, unlike the American Leonard Maltin, in whose guide nearly 5% of the movies achieve his highest rating. So Halliwell is certainly discerning, if nothing else.

In bestowing his highest honour, Halliwell chooses with infinite care, sampling classics from across the history of cinema; from silent shorts made in 1916, such as Chaplin's immortal Easy Street, as well as a few great features from that era, such as Intolerance,  moving through each cinema epoch, picking priceless gems from each era of the movies out of the 25,000-odd that are listed in the guide. If we scrutinise the list, we find to our delight we have already seen many of them and loved them as unconditionally as he has: You know, ones like Laurence of Arabia  or Fargo, movies everyone has seen. Some, however, were a little more obscure; certainly I had never heard of most of them. I went through the list one by one, identifying films I hadn't yet seen. Of the 256 listed movies, I had already seen 198. There were 58 left to see.

Shortly after we discovered LoveFilm and began whittling away at the list. It was immensely satisfying at first, and I knocked off a few glorious oversights in my cinematic education during the first few months. But it soon became apparent that many of the films on the list were hard to find: They were often unobtainable through Lovefilm, for reasons I have never fully understood. So I resorted to buying some of them through Amazon, in turn having to buy a DVD player that could adapt to both regions because some of the movies I was after were only available in the American format. This widened my range still further, but even then some titles remained elusive. Then my brother, bless him, a fellow film buff and as it happens a big collector of DVDs, filled in several of the gaps and the list dwindled once again/

As the years advanced, I steadily made inroads into the all-important list. By 2010, from which point  I began keeping this blog, there were only 20 films outstanding. I started publishing a monthly film review in which I reviewed the remaining movies on the list as I tracked them down, one by glorious one.

And by the time this year dawned,  only a handful eluded me. And now, now I can sense the event horizon is at hand. With mounting excitement I have just this week realised that I am just two films away from achieving my great goal- and both are within my grasp as we speak!

The films in question are: Aladdin, Disney's 1992 animation, and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Fred Schepisi's 1978 film. The first of these is sitting on our priority list on LoveFilm, whilst the second I have finally been able to buy, albeit at the exorbitant price of £25.

And now a strange calm seems to have come over me. For some reason I have not raced to see them both and thereby complete my project.. I know they are there, I say to myself, no hurry. What am I waiting for? you may ask. What's going on? And then I realise what is happening. I'll be all right then. Those dread, stupid words coming back to mock me after six long years. Because the answer is, of course, I will not be all right then, nor will I ever be be. True, I have become a little more accepting of my predicament in the interim. Through daily practise, I have become more skilled at dealing with my loss  But I will never be truly whole again, and it would be better to accept that quietly, and perhaps not make any more silly bargains in the future.

Despite this, I am still able to say my film-finding exercise has been rather marvellous:  58 films, some of which have almost literally assumed the status of life-changers: from silent classics such as Birth of a Nation and Sunrise, to outrageous pre-code musical masterpieces like Love Me Tonight, or supremely elegant masterpieces from the 40s like Trouble in Paradise and To Be or Not to Be; classics from the French cinema like Boudo Saved From Drowning and Les Enfants Terrible and on to post-war miracles like The Red Balloon and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie.
In the last analysis I can pronounce the whole thing a brilliant success: I have enriched my life immeasurably in the process. But have I entirely dispensed with bargaining? Alas, I fear not. You see,  I write down all the books I have read and all the new films I have seen in a special notebook which, by my estimation, has enough pages left to last another twenty years. Surely, by the time I finally fill all  that I'll be all right. Won't I?