In a world of people shouting spoilers left and right, it goes without saying that before you begin reading, you MUST watch "Citizen Kane" despite being released almost 75 years old (on September 5th, 2016).
"Citizen Kane" which was produced, directed, and acted in by Orson Welles, who uses the character Charles Foster Kane to create or at least portray an unheard perspective of the man who controlled media. "Citizen Kane" is a mystery movie and as we continue to unravel the life of Kane, we are grabbed as to how a man of such power, wealth, and fame could even have the slightest hint of human in him. His personality and behavior seem as though they could never be more distant from actual people.
Although based off the newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst, Welles exposes how Kane exists in all of us, especially millennials. At no other point in our life do we feel the need to prove ourselves more than our youth, often caused by ignorance and the desire to be acknowledged. Throughout the life of Kane, he has many different stages of where he is trying to prove himself beginning with his move from Colorado to New York. Kane purchases a failing newspaper all in order to prove to William Thatcher, his former legal guardian, that he will never be greedy like him. As a man running for election, Kane tries to pose himself as a man of the people who understands their hardship and man fit for a gubernatorial position. And, as a thrice-married man, he tries to prove that he is the only source of happiness his wives needed through wealth and material. Due to his many failures from changing values, to losing an election, and as a inadequate husband, Kane realizes he was not the man he wished to become and that if he could have stayed in Colorado as a child he would have where he would be less influenced by others.
Connecting to a movie from the 1940's is not as difficult as it may seem. In fact, it has been greatly strengthened due to social media, which although has brought about many positives has created negatives. Many people, as well as myself, feel the burden of having to please society somehow, that we must give up certain little pleasures in order to appeal to the masses and in order to be recognized. But if we remember our roots, if we do not lose sight of who we are, we will go on to achieve our destiny, not the one of someone else. Then when we are old, we will not have to look n our past and think of our "Rosebud". We will not be filled with regret, and we will be content with our choices.
