A cento for favorite movies

I didn't live these lives, but I can't forget them.

It started with a family text from my husband on Saturday morning: “We’re doing a family version of the Sight and Sound poll. If you want to participate, submit your top ten films of all time, in no particular order.” A few minutes later, “We’re gonna expand to some friends too.” My older kids emailed or texted their responses; my six- and eight-year-olds jumped in with handwritten lists.

This project took up my brain for the rest of the weekend. It’s Tuesday and I just sent my list to my sixteen-year-old (who has been creating a spreadsheet to keep track of it all).

As the lists continued to come in from my parents, in-laws, friends, and co-workers, I started to relive these movies. Sometimes I realized that they made my long list because of one shattering scene (“Death Becomes Her,” “Arrival”); or the whole movie felt so perfectly put together that I couldn’t single out just one part (“Monsoon Wedding”, “A Room with a View”); or they permanently hold a part of my childhood (“The Last Unicorn,” “The Black Stallion”). I decided to write a (very informal) cento using quotes and summaries of movies or scenes that have stayed with me (with thanks to X.P. Callahan who first introduced me to the cento form).   

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A cento for favorite movies

Her father huddles in a empty bathtub, suit and shoes still on.
Maybe this time, I'll be lucky. Maybe this time, he'll stay.
The pin read, “How’s it going to end?” I’ve been wondering that myself.
Now Dr. Ernest Menville always felt that life begins at fifty. 
It was the tiny mouse in a red cloak who had the power to save the house.
‘Slow ahead.’ I can go slow ahead. Come on down here and chum some of this shit.
He sees his son in the sand, eyes closed. It’s okay. Daddy’s here. Daddy’s got you.
She gives him a pen as a gift. What will be the first judgment I sign with it?
I was twenty when they said a woman couldn't swim the Channel. 
                       You're twelve; you think a horse of yours can win the Grand National.
The singer pauses, water pours down the aisle, and the shimmering bride steps into it.
But of all God’s miracles, large and small, the most miraculous one of all—
Asteroids crash and the ivory palace cracks. Call my name! Bastion, please!
You don’t know who I am. I died sixty years ago. I ate opium and I died for my daughter’s sake.
When I watch the Brachiosaurus move past, I will never not be fifteen years old.
Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.
He finds a modern penny in his old-fashioned trousers. And that’s the end.
I like to watch them. They fill me with joy. The first I felt it I thought I was going to die.
If I had to do it all over again, I would. Even knowing what I know now.

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“Say Anything” (1989)
“Cabaret” (1972)
“The Truman Show” (1998)
“Death Becomes Her” (1992)
“The Secret of N.I.M.H.” (1982)
“Jaws” (1975)
“Finding Nemo” (2003)
“Trois Couleurs: Rouge” (1994) 
“National Velvet” (1944)
“Crazy Rich Asians” (2018)
“Fiddler on the Roof” (1971)
“The NeverEnding Story" (1984)
“The Joy-Luck Club” (1993)
“Jurassic Park” (1993)
“The Sound of Music” (1965)
“Somewhere in Time” (1980)
“The Last Unicorn” (1982)
“Arrival” (2016) [I'm paraphrasing what I remember from the movie.]