Classic Movies People Still Don't Understand

Sometimes, a film doesn't necessarily need to make perfect sense to be a classic. Some of the most complex, baffling, and even infuriating films ever made have still ascended to become unassailable masterpieces. These films succeed with viewers despite confusing them, in part because they're visually stunning, well-performed, well-written, or all three. 

There's something else at work in your brain, though, when you come across a film that you know is well made but that you also can't quite seem to understand. When a film just absolutely begs to be seen as a compelling work of art, you can be driven to return to it over and over again, even if you're not entirely sure what's happening. Those rewatches just spawn more theories about their meanings, and the cycle repeats. That's often how a good film becomes a classic one. 

In that spirit, here are a few films that made it to classic status even if some viewers still don't quite understand them.

Another relatively direct movie in terms of plot, The Will Be Blood is about a man's drive to conquer the world of oil speculation. We follow Daniel Plainview's (Daniel Day-Lewis) quest for dominance throughout his life, see the risks he's willing to take and the sacrifices he's willing to make, and we even see that he's prepared to debase himself in an act of public humiliation if it means winning in the long term. Where viewers tend to get confused is not in what happens, but why, and that's particularly true of the final scene, when Daniel gets his revenge on Eli (Paul Dano) by revealing that Eli's attempt at one final land deal is worthless. 

The "I drink your milkshake" scene is famous not just for that memorable exchange of dialogue, but for its abrupt conclusion, as Daniel declares "I'm finished" after having murdered Eli with a bowling pin. It leaves a lot of viewers scratching their heads, but if you look at it juxtaposed with Daniel's earlier baptism by Eli, it becomes an operatic, violent reverse baptism, and Daniel's decree of "I'm finished" just puts an exclamation point on the religious metaphor.

If you were a teenager in the early 2000s, there's a very good chance you developed an obsession with Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly's breakthrough film about a teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is pulled into a world of violence, time travel, and sinister bunny rabbits. It's easy to see why it garnered such a following. The film has a great cast, a great soundtrack, an inviting retro setting, and of course a plot that rewards continuous rewatching and interpretation. 

Even now, it's hard for many viewers to completely grasp everything that's happening in the film. It's obvious that time travel has a role to play, and that it all hinges in some way on that jet engine making its way into Donnie's bedroom. Beyond that, certain things are left murkier than others, and that's just the way Kelly wanted it. Reflecting on the film years after its release, he celebrated both the fans who want to dissect the film over and over again and the fans who simply want the emotional experience of watching it once. There's no wrong way to watch Donnie Darko, but if you watch it once, you might not be able to stop.

Many film fans might argue that Mulholland Drive has no place on this list, as it's actually considered one of the more accessible films in the David Lynch canon. It's certainly easier to penetrate than things like Eraserhead and Inland Empire. But because the film has a reputation as one of Lynch's easier-to-digest works (not to mention one of his most visually stunning), viewers who aren't necessarily used to Lynch's particular bag of surreal tricks tend to gravitate toward it. Anyone who has no idea what they're in for may well walk away scratching their heads. Therefore, Mulholland Drive just might have confused more Lynch viewers per capita than anything else in his filmography short of Twin Peaks.

So, why is it so confusing? Well, all the usual Lynchian tricks are there. Different storylines that sometimes don't seem to relate to one another at all come and go, the plot progresses with a strange dream logic that doesn't pause to explain itself, and the mundane is fused with the bizarre in such a way that you're never really sure if what you're seeing is supposed to be "real" in the world of the film. As it turns out, if you're really looking for the solution to Mulholland Drive, "dream logic" is the answer. Or you could just absorb it as an emotional experience from which you can draw your own meaning. It's up to you.

Writer Charlie Kaufman's screenplays have never had a reputation for being particularly easy to grasp, as any fan of Synecdoche, New York will tell you. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has a bit of an advantage in this department, because we are always aware that the film is playing with the nature of memory, a naturally malleable and often unreliable concept. Even if we don't always follow it, we can still be entertained and moved as we watch what happens when Joel (Jim Carrey) decides to erase his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) from his memory via an experimental scientific process.

As the film journeys through Joel's mind, and he fights to preserve some memory of Clementine by stashing her away in his childhood, it's clear that his emotional journey has shifted. What's less clear is exactly how the memory removal process works, how much of Clementine he saved, and what exactly remains of them in each other by the end of the film. The good news, though, is that Eternal Sunshine is much more of an emotional journey than a plot-driven one, so even if you don't completely follow the memories, you can follow the feeling. The way that whimsical director Michel Gondry brings Kaufman's bittersweet story to life earns it a spot on our list of movies that are practically flawless.