Things That Won’t Let You Go
Rosebud, Citizen Kane, and Unpacking: our story in a cardboard box. #cinema #memory #biography #rosebud #videogame
Welcome back to Artcade, the moving truck that pulls up right in your driveway. I know moving is one of life’s worst nightmares, but in this case the truck arrives at sunset, the boxes are already packed, and the soft thud of cardboard on a new floor sounds like music. Different vibe already, right?
Before we begin, a heads-up: Artcade is usually spoiler-free, but there’s one brief paragraph where I can’t help discussing the ending of Citizen Kane (without spilling too many details). I promise I’ll flag the paragraph with plenty of spoiler warnings. And now… enjoy unpacking! No, wait, enjoy the read!
Citizen Kane opens with the luxurious slowness movies could afford back then: a gate, a window, a dimly lit room. A hand lets go of one of those snow globes and someone, on their last breath, says a mysterious word: “Rosebud.”
The rest of Citizen Kane is an autopsy performed with headlines and gossip. Two hours spent trying to answer the question: what did that word mean? Colleagues, friends, wives—everyone swears they knew Kane.
Everyone has a memory; no one has the man. We too feel we know him better the longer the movie rolls, but “Rosebud” stays a mystery, and right up to the end there’s that nagging sense there’s more.
[SPOILER WARNING: the next paragraph discusses the ending of Citizen Kane.]
Our fate as viewers isn’t so bad: we do find out what “Rosebud” really is. Because while the answer goes up in flames in a furnace, none of the characters who scrambled to solve the riddle are there. Nobody looks, not even the person who physically tosses those objects into the fire will realize they’ve had the solution in their hands.
[End of SPOILERS.]
But the movie’s best trick is another: we want to know Kane; we want the mysterious word to explain who he is. In part, it does. But the wish to reveal an entire person by cracking a single mystery would’ve been Freud’s fever dream, and it just doesn’t work like that. We all crave a tidy noun to do the labor of a thousand messy verbs. Human beings slip the noose of that simplification. At the end of the movie, we’re custodians of a single moment in Kane’s life. “Rosebud.” One of the most precious and most unknown. That ought to be enough.
Orson Welles (1941) Citizen Kane [Audiovisual work] [Drama] [119 min.] RKO Radio Pictures, Mercury Productions
Citizen Kane and Unpacking resemble each other: the entire game, like the movie, revolves around one person, yet that person never appears. Objects fill the screen and the protagonist, much like Kane, reveals herself through the many things we pull from the boxes.
Boxes, plural. Because in the game we follow the protagonist through eight moves, from 1997 to 2018, and each time we have to place her things in new rooms. There are no reporters here. No voice-overs, no exposés, no parade of witnesses. There’s a stack of boxes and the quiet authority of stuff. Unpacking hands us a life in the form of towels, mugs, sketchbooks, controllers, and a stubborn, pink, stuffed animal that refuses to be left behind.
Unpacking tells its story without shouting. It speaks through details, through small things that add up. As we fill the rooms, we learn a person’s boundaries from where an object belongs and where it absolutely doesn’t. It’s Citizen Kane in reverse: instead of one giant totem called Rosebud (something like Proust’s madeleine, but for those who remain), there are dozens of tiny breadcrumbs scattered across the years.
Unpacking is a small, simple game that gives you a pleasant feeling while playing. Maybe it’s the surprise of pulling each item from a box; maybe it’s the satisfaction of watching the pile of cardboard disappear, one by one; maybe it’s the way rooms come to life. Whatever it is, Unpacking lets you experience moving house with a spirit you could never muster in real life. Not bad, right?
Witch Beam (2021) Unpacking [Video game] [Puzzle] [3½ Hours] (Xbox Series X) [Windows, macOS, iOs, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series S, Android, Linux) Humble Bundle
Information Desk:
Talking about Citizen Kane as a masterpiece is obvious today, but thanks to a boycott (Kane was modeled on a real-life magnate), the movie didn’t land huge box-office success on release. At the Oscars it only won Best Original Screenplay; Best Picture went to How Green Was My Valley, which—be honest—how many can say they’ve actually seen today? Time has a way of resetting perspective.
Unpacking won around a dozen awards and was a finalist for many more. Who deserves a spot in the “Best Of” trophy case more than that? Time to put the trophies back on the shelf.
And speaking of perspective: think moving is a nightmare? Try moving an entire Swedish village.
My last two coins
How much do a shout and a whisper weigh? Sometimes you send a message bobbing off in a bottle; other times you blast it on every channel. I still don’t know how to pick between the two. If I had Unpacking’s and Citizen Kane’s class… Instead, looking back, I feel like I shouted when I should’ve whispered and spoke under my breath when I should’ve yelled my lungs out. Oh well, what can you do? At least I didn’t have laryngitis in those moments. Until the next episode, ciao!