re-viewing cinema paradiso

it was given to me as a Christmas gift, but i just got around to watching the new version of "cinema paradiso". i watched it in college, and remember how nostalgic it was about film. this new version has 51 minutes of additional footage (so the publicity goes) and tells about whatever happened to his 1 great love.
some movies just make you uncomfortable when you watch it years after. i felt the same nostalgia for film, but some parts (the romance parts of it), i didn't like too much. must be age.
i am so fortunate to have been a part of that generation of film students who actually worked with film stock. there's something in the sensation of the it, the detail of it, that will always make film #1 on my list. i also love the old theaters. and i always love seeing "old italy".
the film is also by the director of "malena", and i can completely relate to his lament of the new trampling on the old. i think i have an european soul, bec. i can so relate to the visuals of not only old italian, but german, films. and also of european art.
ok, so i didn't so much like the love story. mostly bec., though i think it seemed so romantic when i first saw it, the idea of a guy following you around taking footage of you and standing outside your window every night--but NOT talking to you is just, here's the jaded realist in me, weird. as our priest said the other sunday, love is cognitive and affective: "how can you love someone when you don't know that person?"
i'm not sure, overall, if i appreciated the "closure" provided by the new story. it tells us what happened all those years ago, but changes our perspective about the characters. i rather think the movie went the right way the first time in delving on Toto's maturity and development, than on the love story and his "one great love".
nevertheless, here are some lessons to take to heart:
1) things happen for a reason
2) things happen as they are meant to
3) we shouldn't hold on to the past