My wife and I watched Brian and Charles last weekend and had a lot of fun with that film. I don't sit through a lot of films anymore and found myself thoroughly engaged with the story and setting, but I also like stories with small towns where weird things happen so grain of salt and all that.
Countdown until someone submits āwhat is the Jeanne Dielman of videogames?ā to the dirtbagā¦
imo itās pretty obvious that the ā22 list was compiled with particular attention toward Making a Statement, which Jeanne Dielman at #1 certainly does. I have nothing qualitative to say about the film but I think itās slightly troubling that other āGreatest Film of All Timeā candidates like Kane, Vertigo and 2001 are all films you could show to a moderately curious general audience and have them recognize something of value, while Jeanne is deliberately punishing and inaccessible and known/enjoyed almost exclusively by cinephiles. Not a great thing for perceptions of āreal cinemaā as existing in an ivory tower.
On the opposite end of the spectrum though, I think all the 2010s films added to the list are preposterous to consider ācanonicalā. I mean, yeah, at the end of the day itās just a rarefied popularity contest and no one seeking to have diverse and eclectic tastes should place too much stock in it anyway, but nothing says āwe let Youtubers vote on thisā like _Portrait of a Lady on Fire_ being declared one of the greatest films of all time (in a list that does not include, say, a single Terrence Malick film) by so-called experts.
In conclusion, LOL
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(People here have seen _RRR_ by nowā¦ right?)
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@ā2501ā#p95692 imo itās pretty obvious that the ā22 list was compiled with particular attention toward Making a Statement, which Jeanne Dielman at #1 certainly does.
I keep seeing folks (like Schrader here) mention how this is a kind of "statement" to have it at the top, but like you mentioned isn't this just a popularity contest? It literally got the most votes so not really "politics" behind it unless there was some sort of campaign pushed out to voters? (which maybe there was that I'm not aware of?)
It is interesting to see these kind of debates that start coming real close to the equivalent of "should Dark Souls have an easy mode?" A fairly "difficult" movie getting a lot of popular attention among critics and filmmakers (see: "users") and a question of whether its "difficulty" is necessary or worth driving the accolades, derision, and/or inaccessibility? I do like how Tim consistently pushes how movies/books are _not_ passive entertainment and themselves need a level of involvement people tend to only ascribe to video games, and _Dielman_ is a pretty solid example that also can seem pretty tame compared with a 40+ romp through Shenmue's similar deluge of basic tasks.
I didn't actually intend to answer my jokey submission comment above but I guess now that I'm thinking about this uh...
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@soapboxcritic āwhat is the Jeanne Dielman of videogamesā
..._maybe it's Dark Souls_, lol.
ps: love Schrader to death, but man does the fact that he posts exclusively to facebook make sense with his undercooked reactionary posts and the use of "woke" that more or less means "stars a woman". Also: kinda funny to see folks pointing out out strongly Dielman operates like a proto-Schrader character (and as a recent _Jeanne Dielman_ viewer I did get to thinking about his lovely _The Card Counter_ and latching onto the purposefully mind-numbing mundane repetitiveness of professional gambling):
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@āsoapboxā#p95710 I think Schraderās comments and insinuations about S&S rigging the polls are generally responding to just how dramatic an upset the ā22 list is from all previous iterations. Whereas previous changes in the list have been gradual across decades, Jeanne leapt from the 40s to #1 between one poll and the next - without exactly attaining a level of cultural visibility on par with Welles, Hitchcock or Kubrick. The new additions to the list are a conspicuously even spread of representation for women, queer and black directors or subjects, while many of the dropped films have either subjects or directors now considered Problematic. The 2010s films added to the list are all well-marketed, Oscar-winning/nominated films overwhelmingly preferred by younger audiences and specifically dealing in progressive ideological themes. So while itās certainly true that Schrader is a cranky old white man concerned about his canon, I donāt think heās totally crazy to suggest that S&S (which has been criticized as overly conservative in the past) may have pulled some shenanigans with the weighting of votes or selection of voters for ideological purposes, because the list certainly reads like it would if that were the case. Of course, it could also be the newly expanded voting cohort - twice as large as the last poll, including bloggers, Youtubers, and podcasters - or just a sudden, drastic shift in critical priorities. Probably itās all of the above.
I honestly havenāt seen _JD_ (like with many people, the length and reputation for rough viewing put me off) but I feel like _Souls_ isnāt quite an adequate comparisonā¦ while _Souls_ is HARD, there is nothing obtuse about it as far as the audienceās ability to _get it_. It demands precision and memorization in a way not everyone will find āaccessibleā, but it isnāt just _intentionally boring_ and alienating beyond its willingness to present the player with a fail state. Its controls are responsive and satisfying, its aesthetics are exotic and striking, and those are precisely the qualities that makes devotees want to delve in further despite the gameās mechanical resistance to their incursion (which used to be how virtually all action games worked). Itās not nearly avant-garde enough or hostile enough to the conventional meaning and catharsis-generating systems of video games to merit that kind of comparison imo.
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@ā2501ā#p95713 I feel like Souls isnāt quite an adequate comparison
Oops I should have clarified with a "[Tim Rogers voice] _that was a joke_", but now that you mention the memorization there is a large part of Jeanne Dielman's 3 part/3 "day" structure that similarly encourages memorizing her moves as the first hour/"day" builds up a routine that gets unraveled (and unlike a FromSoft game you wont' have to google "ending explained"....but I digress, not really a serious comparison nor do I really have a fully fleshed out argument to match Tim's regarding movies being non-passive entertainment.
But I would be interested in changing your perspective on the film and encourage checking it out! I similarly came into the film knowing it was notorious for its pace, but it is definitely not "intentionally boring" or "the SLOWEST movie EVER that is great _because_ its SO SLOW", along with the buildup/tear down structure mentioned above there's quite a bit of magic it is able to pull off _because_ of it's pacing and rote tasks; the first day is really built up as fairly busy with small, scheduled tasks (it would be no spoiler to mention one of them involved sex work; that is all the more powerful to be conflated with like removing potatoes from a boil before bathing or scolding her son for reading at the table and remembering to enjoy some music before digging into her knitting). Yes the first hour is deeply slow (I'm not here to say the film is _not slow_) but once it gets rolling the shifts in her schedule (or especially moments she's lacking in tasks and digging into her thoughts) start tapping into a kind of crazy tension that do build to a kind of nail-biter feeling.
In short, I came out like "oh that makes a lot of sense as a number 1", I think you're worried it's more "intentionally boring" and maybe thinking that's what Schrader is getting at (I think he might sadly...just be reactionary against a perceived "wokeness"). There's _definitely_ slower movies (there's a reason Warhol's films aren't on this list) and in the era when Tim Roger's can get over half a million views in a few months span for a 6 hour youtube about a game with 31 thirty-minute days of quiet tasks, I do really emphasize that if you give Jeanne Dielman a view (in the right headspace) that you may not think "it's the best movie everrr", but at least that it..._makes sense_
@āsoapboxā#p95728 I mean, I will inevitably end up watching the movie at some point - Iāve heard nothing but raves about it to the point where I feel like Iāve already osmosed a good deal of it, Iām sure it utilizes time and structure brilliantly in service of its message. I also expect it to be a pretty brutal sit, as someone who already gets antsy watching, like, John Cassavetes movies (though who knows, maybe Jeanneās stillness vs. Cassavetesā aggravated chaos will be much easier on me). And unlike a Welles, Kubrick or Hitchcock film, I donāt suspect for one second that itās the kind of film that could show the power of cinema to anyone, that I could show it to my non-cinephile friends or family and expect them to get much out of it. (Can you really say itās not ādeliberately boringā when, as Iāve seen many critics point out, boring the audience is so central to its entire thesis? Itās a peak example of art that is antithetical to āenjoymentā, āfunā, etc. because itās more interested in revealing truth through structure and through unpleasant experiences, which is certainly not an unworthy goal for art but idk if I could ever consider something like that to be my favorite ever.)
I think Schrader is likewise saying that it _is_ a great film, but getting surged forward on the list by people interested in making a political statement doesnāt actually do it any favors and compromises what was (arguably) valuable about _S&S_ās more conservative valuation of the canon. Heās not attacking the film itself, but its framing by critics/the BFI.
Iām not familiar with Timās schtick about films or literature as āgamesā (possibly because I havenāt watched any of his 6-hour videos) so I donāt know the details of the argument but can probably imagine the gist of it: they all present the audience with select information to process, we interpret symbols or imagine what might happen next or project ourselves into the narrative such that weāre internally or externally issuing commands to the characters, and the author anticipates our potential response and plays with itā¦ Iām guessing it goes something like that? I mean obviously the fundamental differences between traditional narrative mediums and games are extremely easy to point out, but yeah there are definitely common points of grammar that arenāt widely acknowledged.
I mean, I could see the āgame makes you repeat a menial task many times, but gradually it changes to show narrative progression leading to a climactic breakā thing as being a structural ingredient that many video games have in common with Jeanne Dielman though I canāt think of any that push it to quite such a confrontational extreme
@ā2501ā#p95737
I donāt think Timās elaborated either himself from what Iāve heard, one of those statements i think he just tossed out that seems believable and fully believe he _could_ really dig into a lot of specifics onā¦
But yeah Cassavetes is a good point regarding difficulty, I loved _Woman Under the Influence_ partly _for_ itās difficulties but I sure hated _Husbands_ and probably have not struggled so much with a movie that consistently repulsed and terrorized me (and I love all those guys in that movie!). Cassavetes is definitely the _Dark Souls_ of directors, lol.
Jeanne Dielman is mostly that āhey you have to pay attention to the mysteries of Delphine Seyrigās face or youāll miss out on her mix of contented-reliance-upon task-work vs despising her tasks (or just boiling in anxiety)ā kind of difficulty. It was a rainy empty day when I dug into it and was just fully ready to spend time with it knowing it would be tough so maybe I was also in a perfect headspace, but clearly a movie with a huge influence on a large number of folks!
@āsoapboxā#p95741 Yeah I was thinking the other day in response to a Film Twitter query about which films Iāve seen I would consider most ādifficultā, and I think of the top examples that came to mind thereās a split between ones I found tough to penetrate on one level but appreciated on some other (Salo, Hard to Be a God, Tarkovsky) and ones I found overly tough to penetrate and didnāt find doing so to actually be worth it in the end (88:88, Primer, choice cuts of Godard). Some films I love are declared ādifficultā due to their emotional content (violent or upsetting images), the upsetting nature of which I find crucial to the moral and thematic weight of the art and therefore totally fulfilling as an artistic experience. Silent films are often deemed ādifficultā, but I find them more routinely engaging than most talkies lol. āDifficultyā is relative I suppose, but I think if weāre talking about artistic masochism Jeanne seems about on par with something like Getting Over It or I Wanna Be the Guy - brutalizing the audience to make a point. Which may be a brilliant point! But itās definitely not accessible art. (And on that topic, I think thereās a somewhat different conversation going on with cinema as opposed to games when it comes to class-coded stratification of art and ādifficultā material existing in an ivory tower.)
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@ā2501ā#p95713 I donāt think heās totally crazy to suggest that S&S (which has been criticized as overly conservative in the past) may have pulled some shenanigans with the weighting of votes or selection of voters for ideological purposes, because the list certainly reads like it would if that were the case.
I don't really know enough about the inner workings of S&S to say anything with confidence, but I do feel like there have been some pretty large cultural changes (in the US at least) over the past decade. I'm young, so maybe I'm just saying this because the 2010s was the first decade I fully experienced with an actual awareness of what was going on around me -- I feel like someone else is going to pop in and argue that every decade has similar degrees of social change. Though I don't know -- a lot of stuff that was still considered controversial 10 years ago, like gay marriage, seems to just be a thing now, and lots of ideas that used to be only found in far-left circles seem to be fairly widespread in at least some diluted form. So I'm not sure there needs to be any political machinations in order to see these kinds of changes in the list. (Though that of course doesn't prove that there weren't any).
Again, without actually knowing who voted and how the votes were weighed itās impossible to know if the upheavals in the list were due to the expansion of the voting cohort into a previously excluded demographic of Jeanne Dielman and/or Portrait fans, or a sweeping change in values and priorities for Anglosphere film critics, or a more localized change in values and priorities at Sight & Sound that informed how the whole thing was put together and possibly influenced from the top down. Probably itās all of the above, to varying degrees. Yes, āwokeā is an unhelpfully vague bugaboo, but I think itās safe to assume Schrader objects to the change of values (e.g. that amplifying marginalized or politically necessary voices is a more pressing obligation than pure artistic assessment/that pure artistic assessment doesnāt exist) as well as whatever factors caused the list to look like it had been redesigned by someone who held the values of that new (but not by any means universal) critical hegemony.
itās not a very āwokeā list though. Thereās like max 5/100 films that seem like any kind of a reach. And what is his point about it not doing Jeanne Dielman any favors? The fact that a film is A) in black and white and/or B) has subtitles is going to alienate most of the public (73/100), and people curious enough about ācinemaā to take the time to watch the movies on this list are going to have the opportunity to see in Jeanne Dielman if a genuinely experimental and challenging resonates with them.
_Moonlight_ and _Portrait of a Lady on Fire_ are the only maybe over-reaches, but they're very good and better than DW Griffith for example if not as individually historically notable. The weirdest thing on there is Blade Runner....
But the real weirdest unremarked thing about the critics list is how there are so many ties. Only about 1/4 of the list is differentiated at all. Wonder what happened there?
@āyesoā#p95772 it makes it appear as a tier list now that I think about it.
@āyesoā#p95772 Personally I donāt think any of the 2010s films added to the list (Portrait, Moonlight, Get Out, Parasite) should qualify as āgreatest of all timeā or even āgreatā films and I know thatās not an unpopular opinion. A bunch of new entries like Do the Right Thing, Killer of Sheep, Daughters of the Dusk, The Piano and Black Girl are excellent films but their inclusion all at once, like Jeanne and Beau Travail leaping up the list in massive surges, is obviously motivated. Like surely we can admit that either the voters or the vote compilers had certain priorities here beyond just aesthetic assessment. Every general press piece about the list reads āfemale-directed film named best of all timeā; the BFI itself is touting the listās āchallenging of the canonā and ādiversity and inclusionā in press materials. Itās okay to admit the thing is happening even if you think it is a good thing. (Blade Runner was on the 2012 list, in roughly the same spot.)
But whatever, I also donāt think Billy Wilder or Jean Renoir or _The Godfather_ are all that so, I canāt say Iām deeply invested in consensus canons anyway at the end of the day. They did Welles dirty on this one though.
The thing we have to understand here is that there have been more votes in this edition than in the prior ones, hence thatās why the list is so fucking weird and disjointed, or there are few recent bias that might challenge whatās been stablished. Honestly, Iām glad that those two movies have gotten up so much in the list (would have been bonkers to see Bigelow in the top 100, or Rita Azevedo Gomes), but honestly, lists like these are thermometres of our times. Personally, I feel the list is not very much diverse in terms of sex and race, and at the same time my main complaint is that there is not even a little bit of experimental films in there (maybe Maya Deren was there and thatās it, I reckon?).
Honestly, I don't take that seriously. I just cheer for what's there because there is a lot of filmbro sentiment around those things.
PS: Tim watched the Interview with the vampire series. Yesterday I did a good duo of existential crisis vampire movies: The Addiction+Interview with the vampire (the 94 one). Hey, Jordan's movie surprised me a lot, and the ending is really neat, even if there are some things that feel really fake in terms of production.
yes apart from a few very good if not all time great 2010s films making it on there, and the jump from Ackerman and Denis, it's still a conservative list.
@"2501"#p95796 have you read anything as to why there are so many ties when more than 16,000 selections were part of this list? It looks like the poll we did here on this website when we had a fraction of the contributors. I don't get it
@āxhekrosā#p95797 Definitely agree that as far as shaking up the canon more non-narrative film wouldāve been nice. I think the list prior to this iteration was very consciously not a thermometer of the times, or at least not half as blatantly, but oh well - it is now.
Havenāt read anything about the math and weighting they used for this; Iām not sure if thatās even made public.
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@āyesoā#p95799 I donāt get it
I wouldn't be surprised if they had some kind of margin a vote count needed to pass in order to rank above/below nearby films. Like if one film got 4000 votes, should one that gets 3990 reasonably rank a whole step below it?
On the other hand I don't know how voting works so shoot me
@"2501"#p95796 Following from @"saddleblasters"#p95748's comment, we don't really know who was polled for the critics' list, but the explosion of independent/decentralized* film criticism as well as the increased political scrutiny applied to movie discussion in the past ten years makes this kind of shakeup, engineered or not, unsurprising (and I'm inclined to think _definitely not engineered_, given how still conservative the list is). The conversation around what makes films great has changed in the past ten years. The canon changed slowly if at all over several decades not because it used to be a more "objective" or purely aesthetic assessment, but because film criticism just like anything else is a club where certain films are valued for reasons felt and upheld (even unconsciously) by the in-group; claiming Welles and Kubrick as more deserving based on general public appeal is a little silly, I mean look at the rest of the list. If you ask me it makes sense the number 1 movie here should be a French-language movie considering that's the clear bias of the rest of the list.
The engine of film criticism/discussion has changed substantially since the last poll. 2012 itself came after a decade of public discourse online, and 2022 after a whole decade of the tectonic shift of social media. Even if plenty of worthwhile discussion exists outside of the bubble of online journalism, but I find it hard to argue against its influence as the focal point of popular discourse.
*([size=9]which is to say, re-centralized, on twitter :( [/size])
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Related question, but thinking aloud here: why does the culture pay 100x more attention to the critics' poll (/why does S&S frame it as more important, conspicuously calling the critics' list "The Greatest Films of All Time"?)? Granted I'm glad we're having a conversation about Jeanne Dielman being number 1 instead of Space Odyssey (incredible movie but boring to talk about at this point). That Dielman found its way near the top of the director's list too shouldn't be ignored. Still beat Vertigo!