Month: December 2022

The British magazine Sight & Sound has published its 9^th decennary list for the “Best Films of All Time”. https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/sight-and-sound-100-best-films-all-time-2022. This decade’s list was derived from a poll of over 1,600 film critics around the world, almost doubling the participants from the 2012 poll. The result is a more diverse array of movies than in prior years, and far different from most such lists you will see.

This being 2022, that diversity has sparked significant backlash. Director Paul Schrader (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, American Gigolo, Cat People), has branded the poll “a politically correct rejiggering”. He was outraged by the leap of “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” from 36^th to 1^st in this year’s poll, calling the leap “a landmark of distorted woke reappraisal”.

By their very nature “all-time” lists are questionable at best. However, as Shrader recognized, with its poll starting in 1952 S&S had managed to carve itself a niche as a “reliable if somewhat incremental measure of critical consensus and priorities”. Shrader believes that in 2022 S&S abrogated that role because voters selected films for their political content rather than their cinematic worth.

Schrader and his ilk ignore the fact that the content of the poll has always been a function of the evaluating panel. The 1952 poll, which only picked a top 10, had 85 critics, all from 9 European countries and the United States. Not surprisingly, there were no films on the list outside of Europe and the United States. I could not find the breakdown of the 1952 critics by gender or ethnicity, though I could pretty much guess.

In 2022, S&S specifically sought to be more inclusive, making clear that it was reaching out for more international input. I have no doubt that they also sought more gender and racial diversity as well. In other words, the 2022 poll reflects who was asked, just as the 1952 poll did.

Much of the criticism focused on the rise of Jeanne Dielman. As I considered the poll, I was embarrassed by the fact that I had not seen this film. So, on a rainy Tuesday, I sat down to absorb all of its three hours and 21 minutes.

Jeanne Dielman is, in many ways, anti-cinema. Director Chantelle Ackerman lingers on long static shots depicting the main character going through daily household tasks, making the bed, preparing supper, eating a sandwich. The camera does not zoom in or provide context. It just observes, and thereby forces the viewer to do the same. There is little dialogue, and what dialogue exists is mostly banal. This film lacks everything I have been brought up to expect in a movie.

Yet, it is gripping in its audacity. Ackerman establishes the unaltering daily routine of Jeanne to such an extent that any deviation from that routine – a dropped brush, a light left on, unkempt hair, a vigorous potato peeling session – seems to carry great significance. As these anomalies, small as they are, mount an explosion seems inevitable. Even though Ackerman flaunts every tenet of exciting movie-watching, the three hours goes fast.

And yet, I cannot generally recommend Jeanne Dielman. You must have extraordinary patience, willing to sit through hours of nothing happening. If you do, it is rewarding, but most viewers will probably never make it that far. I know why this movie is held in such high esteem by critics and filmmakers alike. However, it is not a film that will satisfy most movie-goers.

This reflects my problem with the list generally. Audience satisfaction is apparently not a criterion. Not that there are not some taut thrillers on this list – North by Northwest, The Battle of Algiers, The Night of the Hunter, Get Out – but they are few and far between. There is only one true musical, Singing in the Rain, no grand spectacles (ala Lawrence of Arabia) and no film noir.

It also seems that movie critics lack a sense of humor. I count 11 films that could be classified as comedies, though even that is generous. (Are Daises and The Apartment there because they are laugh riots?). Other than Do the Right Thing and two Miyzaki animated films, there are no comedies (if those films can be classified as comedies) on the list that were made after 1967. No Spinal Tap or Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Nothing by Mel Brooks (The Producers), Woody Allen (Annie Hall), the Coen Brothers (Raising Arizona) or Wes Anderson (Grand Budapest Hotel). These are huge omissions.

And yet, I sympathize with the critics. They do not compile a list of the 100 greatest films, but only submit their top 10. Try it. If you are any kind of moviegoer, it is incredibly hard to winnow the great films down to that level. Anyone conscientiously compiling such a list must feel incredible angst at leaving out masterworks that you know belong in the top 100, but you don’t have room to include.

With that limitation it is inevitable that voters are going to do everything they can to make sure their favorites are recognized. Those favorites may reflect films from a country, or continent (Africa) that has been overlooked. They may reflect topics (racism, feminism) that have been neglected. They may reflect categories of directors (women, people of color) that have not been as celebrated as they should be. I have no problem with that.

The prior S&S polls may have been a “reliable if somewhat incremental measure of critical consensus and priorities”, but that was only possible by keeping those defining that consensus and setting those priorities as narrow as possible. Opening the doors to other views may make accord impossible, but it also shines light on films that deserve to be seen. And at the end of the day shouldn’t that be what these lists are all about?

P.S. It would be duplicitous of me to carp on a poll without providing my own best ever list. As you will see, this reflects my own biases as much as any other voter. These are films that I can watch over and over, which is one of my criteria. I was going to include an honorable mention list (it kills me not to have a Hitchcock, or Truffaut, or screwball comedy, or film noir, etc., etc.), but it got way too long. Let the second guessing begin.

1. Seven Samurai – Kurosawa

2. In the Mood for Love – Wong Kar-wei

3. Seventh Seal – Bergman

4. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb – Kubrick (not on the S&S list???????)

5. Apocalypse Now – Coppola

6. Stalker – Tarkovsky

7. Modern Times – Chaplin

8. Cabaret – Fosse

9. The Third Man – Reed

10. La Strada – Fellini

You know that feeling when something hits you like a bolt of lightning? When you hear a theory that sounds so right that you really don’t have to look too deeply into it to know that it’s valid? That happened over the Thanksgiving weekend, and no, it wasn’t the Qanon heresy that Thanksgiving was a Canadian holiday before liberals coopted it as a celebration of Indian largess.

One of our Thanksgiving guests was telling me about a podcast she heard on the drive to our house which posited that reading is contrary to our evolutionary development, and that this disconnect is a why so many people do not read beyond the extent needed, even in this age of mass literacy. It is also why so many students struggle with reading at a young age. It is just not something that comes naturally.

I had never considered this. From pouring over Curious George books at the Bethlehem Public Library, to struggling with a book my son Max recommended to me, reading has seemed a close second to breathing in importance in my life. The thought that I have been bucking the conditioning of generations never occurred to me. And yet, it makes so much sense.

Writing in even its earliest form did not begin until approximately 5000 years ago. If we start human history with the making of tools, humanity was pre-literate for 3 million years before we ever had to interpret squiggles on a stone tablet, or engraved stile. Our strategies for interacting with the world were hardwired during that time, and they did not include perusing otherwise meaningless jottings.

Throughout this time, we compiled information by what we saw and heard. It was limited in scope, and could be deceptive, but it was immediately accessible. The ability to “read” the world around us was essential for survival. We had to be able to react quickly and instinctively to the the visual and aural clues presented. Sitting on a rock staring intently at a piece of bark is hardly an effective strategy to enhance well-being.

Even once humanity started reading, it was primarily an elitist activity. Most people got along fine without it, thank you very much. Estimates suggest that no more than 10% of the world’s population was literate in ancient times. As of 1820, when the data is much better, that rate had soared to 12%. Though the rates in Europe were much higher, literacy there still was less than 50% (why would women need to read?). Even by the 1930’s only 70% of the U.S. population was literate. In other words, mass literacy is a very recent phenomenon (by 2015 it was up to 86%). 

Is it any wonder that people adapted to the visual arts revolution so quickly? Movies and television are perfect mediums for our primordial conditioning. The flow of moving images matches the world our ancestors inhabited. We instinctively know how to read the cues, and digest the information presented.

Sad as I am to say it, my friend Mark Megaw was correct. Teaching through visuals is the most compatible with this conditioning. At ACE legal conferences, Mark’s presentations, which incorporated eye-catching images and audience participation, were always the most memorable. I will note that since he was generally competing with such topics as bitcoin in the world of insurance and accounting for intercompany transfers, that’s faint praise indeed.      

I have always rebelled against the visual learning construct because I retain information better when I read it. But even I must admit that reading often does not result in long term retention. Though reading served me well as a student, and remains my primary leisure activity, it cannot compete with the images imprinted on my brain cells by movies (the frozen still at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or Bogie in the rain in Casablanca, immediately jump to mind).

I cannot help but believe that in the span of human history, the reign of reading as the primary means of communicating ideas will be a short one. Reading has already shifted to an auxiliary of the presentation of news, not to mention social media. People still need to read, but it is more often as a header across the screen, or the clever (I use that word loosely) punchline of a meme.

The problem is that it is hard to get much depth into a Facebook post, at least depth that anyone will truly consider, and TV news lends itself much more to the polemical than it does to the factual. The reading of books, newspapers, magazine articles (and yes, even a lowly blog) remain the primary way to take a deep dive into any subject. I do not see that changing soon.

The flip side is that so many more people can be reached through TV and social media. I often forget how new these tools are. As we become more comfortable, we hopefully will get better at sifting the wheat from the chaff. That ability to discern needs to be incorporated into our educational system in much the same way that reading is.

Reading will reman an essential skill for a long time to come. However, denying our hardwiring for the visual is counterproductive. We need to embrace the techniques our ancestors used and adapt them to the world we live in today. Fighting those tendencies, as I have been prone to do, just isn’t going to cut it. I can see that now.