The Classic 'Citizen Kane' Still Holds Up

Can a man's last words really explain his life? That's the entire premise of Orson Welles' classic "Citizen Kane." It starts with a death and a simple utterance. "Rosebud." Arguably the most well recognized word in the history of film. It creates a mystery so compelling that we can forgive the fact that it appears as though there was no one there to hear him say it at all. In order to decipher the meaning of the cryptic final message, a news reporter unearths every detail about the newspaper tycoon by interviewing the people in his life. It becomes clear that there is more to this man than is known in the media.

Orson Welles flawlessly portrays and directs himself as a great, but flawed, man. He is a man of conviction and fame, but one that has spent his entire life going through the motions until he becomes so jaded that he becomes a monster trying to keep up appearances. After his political career and first marriage fall apart simultaneously, he slowly loses everything in his life. The narrative is surpassed only in the brilliant cinematography used to bring it to life. Above all things, it is truly visually stunning. Without the use of light and shadow employed throughout, the film would not have been half as good.

Xanadu, his estate, that at first appears so majestic, full of everything one could ever need, eventually becomes a dark prison for the great Charles Foster Kane. After being left by his second wife, he lives and dies alone with only his wait staff and a final mysterious utterance. While the reporter never gets an answer as to what his final word meant, the audience does. And since it's one of the worst kept secrets in film, we already know it was the name of his sled as a child.

Perhaps not the most interesting twist, it does aptly follow that a man who has been given everything longs only for the one thing that was taken away: his childhood. He never cared for the wealth or the notoriety. He came to obliterate all of his meaningful relationships and in the end, nothing could ever fill the void that being ripped from his childhood home left in him. So in his last dying breath, this is all he longed for.

The tragic tale of one great man's life is told masterfully, like a proverbial jigsaw puzzle. By the time we find the final piece, the meaning of "Rosebud," it's impossible not to get chills. The film is undoubtedly one of the great classics with good reason.