My family did this so much growing up, we had a name for it, and two thresholds. We call it borching (from a book we had growing up on Boontling, a little local Northern California language, where "to borch" meant to take in an entertainment repeatedly. Perfect, no?). Reaching six viewings gave you a "Borch." Reaching and passing eight gave you a "True Borch." Why? Because after eight times, the movie viewing experience changes a bit.
After eight viewings, you're in a whole 'nother ballpark. Oddly enough, you can start to have "bad" viewings after eight. "Bad" is a relative term, of course, because no viewing of a movie you've chosen to see this many times is ever bad. But because you're no longer just watching the movie at this point -- you're catching new things all the time, you're watching what actors are doing off to the side, you're watching what the extras are doing, you're paying attention to set decoration, you're memorizing the music, you're reading stuff on computer monitors and signs, you're counting how many bad guys Iron Man flattens when he bulldozes through them. You end up going into the movie saying, "I want to make sure I catch X, Y, and Z." Then you look at something else at that moment and miss it. Oddly, the more times you see a movie, the more likely it is to miss stuff you're actually watching for. Until you get to about twelve viewings, in which case you've finally caught just about everything you wanted to see and you relax again. Now you've finally learned just about every note of music, including which parts are in the movie that aren't on the album (always frustrating, because invariably, one of those non-album moments is one of your favorite bits). You have large swathes of dialogue memorized without even trying. After eight viewings, I usually spend each new viewing focused solely on a different character. It's great fun to watch what the actors are doing things when they're not the main center of attention in a scene with multiple people, but you really can't start seeing that kind of stuff until you've seen it a bunch of times because initially, you don't want to miss something by looking off to the sidelines.
And the most amazing thing to me is that my family doesn't tire of movies seeing them multiple times. In fact, the more times we see it, the more we want to see it again on top of that. It builds on itself and you can't wait to see it again, even if you just saw it. Especially if you just saw it.
Once the movie leaves the theater, then the mad, delightful urgency to see it as many times as you can slowly fades. Life becomes normal, boring, ordinary again. Life shrinks. You have to be content with memories and dreams (and acquired merchandise). And you despair of ever finding another film worthy of that much of your thoughts, money, and time.
I'm looking forward to the DVD coming out, and I'll buy it right away, but I doubt I'll watch it for awhile. I won't be able to bear to see it on the small screen. It will be too depressing for words. But at least, for now, I've memorized what it looks like BIG, so I can close my eyes and expand it back to its real size in my mind.
