Rosebud

Now for those of you who have never seen Citizen Kane and don't want the end spoiled, please by pass this entry. The other day I came into the later half of the movie Citizen Kane, I had always heard of it but just never caught it on amc. I can now see why it was so popular, the movie is of the highest order. What I was struck by was the end of the movie, everyone is trying to find out the importance of the Kane's last words "rosebud" and I believe unless you have watched the entire movie you won't understand the significance of his last words. I did a little research into it and found like the word the answer was simple. It was the only happy memory he had of his childhood and playing with his sled in the snow. In the final scene somewhat similar to the final scene in the first Indiana Jones movie you see this wide shot of a massive warehouse with what seems like miles and miles of crates of things kane had collected over the years, the warehouse is just massive! Then as the camera comes in closer you see a man tossing things into the furnace of things that could not be sold at auction and their in the furnace is tossed his sled whose name was rosebud. So at the very end of this man who had virtually everything and I mean everything, his last words were of the only thing that gave him happiness in this world, the sled from his childhood. That really got me to thinking about what is really important in life. It's not the collecting of "things" or even "wealth" because these are only like a band-aid and their happiness if any is only temporary. I think their is a real lesson here in that it's the simpler things in life that are more valuable and more dear to us than all the wealth in the world.