To a movie lover, the problem is if you averagely watch 300 movies per year, it is just impossible to tell which movie is the one that you love the most. You can tell which ones were the worst, but not to pick one out as the best. So when people asked me that question, I usually had a fairly hesitate attitude about what answer I should be giving.

But The Legend of 1900 is something special. Every time I see it, I can tell (or should I say “confirm again”) exactly that this is the one I love the most, regardless the times and the mood. It’s just a master piece and a timeless classic. The story is unique; the performance of Tim Roth is stunning but in such a subtle way that you actually couldn’t tell that he was acting. I don’t see him very often, only remember him turned up in Quentin Tarantino’s movie Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. I don’t think he is a very main stream or commercial actor, but he is so good that I had a feeling that it would still make him unforgettable as an actor if he had ever only played once in this movie in his whole career of film industry.

The music is stunning as well. I have been practising the one called “Playing Love” on my piano for a while, but I think I had never got it right. Without the movie scenes and the characters in a certain atmosphere, I felt that the music gets actually empty and accordingly my playing was nothing that could compare to the story. Ennio Morricone, the composer, is a genius, who knows exactly how to put the music notes together to make the story more impressive. Very few movie music can merge its melody into the whole story line and make audience cry. The Legend of 1900 can, and it made it happen, not just once, but on one audience again and again.

I believe that I would never be able to give any review towards this movie no matter how many times I watch it. Today is at least my 6th times, I still felt that there are too many things I couldn’t digest well, or say, I don’t want to accept it as a fact. If the ideas of “The life is immense” and “change the life, stay fresh” sound attractive to every ordinary human being, a man who can only live out his life with infinite possibilities, mostly relying on his 88 piano keys and has difficulties adopt himself to the life that actually has no ends, should we say, is actually sick and according to the standard mental illness diagnosis indicators, absolutely has some mental states. But on the other hand, who can say that getting your feet on the land, living out an ordinary life, finally finding yourself a wife and having a house and kids, putting up with no endings or solutions for this life, accepting the reality and making a living through a job, etc…., is supposed to be the only way to spend your life?

Unique people are supposed to remain unique. Whoever finally chose to rather die with his kingdom of life than getting off an abandoned ship without compromise and the second thought are respectable, and after all it’s his own choice. Can you say that sometimes sticking on the life that you get used to would be easier than making comprising to what the life you are confronted and requested you change yourself?