Welcome to the world of film nerdery! Last week, esteemed film publication Sight & Sound released the results of its critics’ survey on the best films of all time. They do this once every ten years, and it’s a nifty way to see how critical tastes shift over time. It also provides a handy guide on the canon so you can quickly catch up and avoid sounding like an idiot at film critic parties (note: don’t ever go to a film critic party). I wasn’t invited to participate, but if I were, my list would have looked something like this.
I’ve only really been a critic for about ten years, so this is my first time engaging with the list. The main takeaway for casual observers is that there is a new number one. For many decades in a row, Citizen Kane came in at the top spot. In 2012, it was supplanted by Vertigo, which to many film buffs isn’t even considered the best Hitchcock movie (I think it’s Shadow of a Doubt, but that’s another story). Film critics love Vertigo for its bold formal choices and its subtextual comment on voyeurism and, by extension, cinema itself. It’s undoubtedly great, but its ascension to the top spot indicated a slight shift away from the mainstream, a charge that is increasingly leveled at the critical community by franchise fanatics.
Such a shift is further solidified with the new #1: Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a 3+ hour drama by French New Wave director Chantal Akerman tracking several banal days in the life of a widowed mother who doubles as a sex worker to pay the bills. You want to talk about a shift away from the mainstream? Well, here’s the deal: I haven’t seen it. To be clear, this is on me. Anyone who knows anything is aware that Jeanne Dielman as a classic, but there are a lot of classics over 125 years of cinema, and we’re all pretty busy. I don’t feel too bad about it: I’ve seen 18 of the top 20 on the list, and 75 of 100. But if a professional film critic who works hard to be informed hasn’t gotten around to Jeanne Dielman, it’s fair to say it’s not as widely-seen or loved a film as, say, Citizen Kane.
To which I say: Good! After reading this list, I am more driven to finally get off my tuchus and watch Jeanne Dielman, and I imagine many other cinephiles will feel the same way. As to the criticism that the ascension of Jeanne Dielman to the top spot represents some sort of post-Me Too backlash against male directors, and that woke film critics only voted with the film’s politics in mind, I say: Okay! The whole point of doing these lists every ten years is that the choices reflect the state of film criticism at the time. Maybe in 2032, we’ll look back at this list and say, “Man, critics were really pushing women directors back then, huh?” Or maybe Akerman will be joined by Agnes Varda in the top five and we’ll think, “Man, critics were bunch of misogynist pigs from 1952 to 2012, huh?” Stay tuned for a newsletter on this topic in 10 years. For now, let’s go watch Jeanne Dielman (like many of the films of the S&S list, it’s available to stream on the Criterion Channel right now).
Two more quick notes on the S&S poll:
My favorite film of all time, The Red Shoes, made the list for the first time, coming in at #67. That’s worth celebrating. If you haven’t seen it, rectify that. It might be the actual zenith of cinema.
There’s also a directors’ poll, the results of which converge and stray from the critics’ poll in fascinating ways.
Losing the GOAT
On some spring evening in 2021, I texted my friend Ethan and said, “This is what it must have felt like to listen to the Beatles in the ‘60s.” I wasn’t talking about a new band or singer, but I was talking about an artist: Jacob deGrom, starting pitcher for the New York Metropolitans, who was in the midst of an incredible run of pitching performances. DeGrom had already won two Cy Young awards (the highest honor for a pitcher) by this point, but he began the 2021 season having somehow improved upon his miraculous talent. Over this stretch of games, he showed a complete mastery of the art of pitching. He mastered the sport. His delivery was impeccable. His control of the ball unimpeachable. Hitters didn’t stand a chance.
One thing I’ve learned about life, however, is that when things are going well, you shouldn’t comment on it. Or to quote Bull Durham, never f*ck with a winning streak. The day after I texted my friend about deGrom, he missed a start with an enigmatic injury. Just as he was about to return, another injury popped up. Then another. Pretty soon, he was out for the year with a series of frustrated setbacks. He then opened 2022 on the injured list with a new, mysterious injury, and in the end pitched only 11 starts.
Now, he’s gone. Earlier this week, deGrom signed a five-year contract with the Texas Rangers. Barring a late-career return, his time with the Mets is over. The Beatles have broken up. Now, there are plenty of Mets fans who will scoff at the length of the contract, think about how it will effect the team payroll in 2025 or 2026 and be grateful the Mets let him go. That ain’t me. I’m a sentimental Mets fan, and I was attached to this guy. Every day that deGrom pitched was a good day. I went down to Citi Field for his final start of the 2018 season to cheer him on as he laid claim to his first Cy Young award. As he walked off the field after his final out, I shouted at the top of my lungs, “I F*CKING LOVE YOU, JAKE!” This middle-aged guy in front of me turned around and shook his head because he was recording it on an iPad, probably for his son, and I just ruined it with my drunken obscenity.
The thing is, though, I did love Jake, and so I can’t be held responsible for my actions. Love makes you do crazy things. Now I’ll have to mourn this breakup and see if I can fall in love again this spring. Baseball is a bummer sometimes.
Warnings
Every fall on Twitter, I play a little game for my followers, and really for myself. I swap the titles of two or more awards-season films to demonstrate how prestige films seem to traffic in the same themes. My masterpiece came in 2019, when I successfully transposed the titles of five different films onto each other. It’s a shame they don’t give Pulitzer Prizes for tweets.
This year, two films broke my little game. They have essentially the exact same title: She Said and Women Talking. The titles are apt, as the films spring from the same post-MeToo impulse to elevate the voices of women who have been marginalized by the Hollywood machine. She Said chronicles the efforts by investigative journalists Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey to uncover the crimes of Harvey Weinstein; it’s made in the mold of All the President’s Men. Or maybe Spotlight, which also features numerous scenes of victims simply recounting the abuses they suffered. To this film’s credit, it fills in the margins of its narrative with vivid details from the lives of its working women. Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Kantor (Zoe Kazan) are seen navigating the work-life balance in ways male journalists are rarely expected to.
Women Talking is crafted more in metaphor. It’s the story of a group of Mennonite women who, after years of abuse at the hands of the men in their community, come together to decide as a group whether to stay and forge some sort of justice, or leave and start a new community elsewhere. It features a murderers’ row of women actors, including Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Clare Foy, and Frances McDormand, and while it mostly takes place in a barn where the women congregate, it feels like it’s a referendum on Hollywood in the post MeToo era, as women wrestle with questions of how to go on in a community that only changed when it was forced to and, according to many, has still not been fully accountable for its crimes.
Maybe it’s the presence of McDormand, in a minor role, that tipped me off to this reading of the film. She’s anti-Hollywood royalty. Or perhaps it’s because the film was written and directed by Sarah Polley, a feminist activist and former child actor who has fervently criticized the industry for its treatment of women and children. Or maybe it has something to do with the film itself, whose dialogue in its central discussions feel so vague and symbolic that it really only works as metaphor. I found it challenging to suspend my disbelief when watching Women Talking because so much of the conversation felt staged and contrived.
I realize I’m on shaky ground criticizing these feminist-forward films, but a critic can only be honest about their experiences, and both Women Talking and She Said fail in ways that are somewhat predictable, given their titles. They mistake their elevation of heretofore marginalized voices for meaningful drama. In She Said, we meet Weinstein’s victims, who each tell their story to the intrepid journalists. The actors who portray these women are remarkable, and the individual scenes have power, but the stories don’t build on each other. We’ve heard them already. The point of the film seems to be to see them embodied, and it comes across more as a technical exercise than a narrative work. Neither film has any real dramatic thrust.
Maybe She Said and Women Talking aren’t supposed to be commercially satisfying. For some, using cinema as a literal microphone to elevate women’s voices is enough, and I plan on reading as many women critics on these films as I can. Perhaps I’ll have my mind changed. For now, they feel like missed opportunities because even in a film designed to “say something” rather than show sometimes, the filmmakers must guide their viewers to their assertions. Watching these films, I didn’t feel guided. I felt abandoned.
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That’s it for now. I’ve got some fun year-end content coming up soon, so please be sure to subscribe and share. There’ll be lots to discuss and more minefields for me to step in.
I fucking love your POV.