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Aug. 19th, 2012 07:16 amThought I might try seeing the 110 films I hadn't yet, from the new expanded Sight and Sound list, but am immediately reconsidering after watching Imitation of Life just now, the only one I could locate on Canadian Netflix. There were a couple moving scenes with the maid and her daughter, and some vaguely interesting camera use, but nothing that could shout down the constant, unintended hilarity it induced. I don't know what the deal here was - respect for it as a milestone in social history? Susceptibility to melodrama inexplicable to the unbreastfed? Blinders due to periodization, by teachers who have to round out syllabi, or being misled by its importance in the history of the film medium (the only explanation I've been able to come up with for all the adulation for non-comic silent films)? Film history is just a game you find you can play when you've seen too many movies, surely - just like literary history. Well, I overstate that, since it's often crucial to know what prior works a given work is adapting or pushing away from, but the point of knowing all that is just to better understand what the later work's saying. But seminality isn't a value in itself: the parents of awesome children not infrequently suck.
I find a lot of the ones I've seen pretty weak or ridiculous too, like Ugetsu. Others I can at least understand fitting well with recognizable aesthetics I don't happen to share, or as weaker imitations of better things viewers happen to have missed, not all of them films (can any lover of Peer Gynt have much respect for Pickpocket)?
And my narcissist enemy pops up often here, and the related-looking but distinct (because compatible with good will) failure of becoming enamored with incommunicable significances - projection of the sense of profundity excites people, sometimes more than actual excellence because it's not clear what these numinous new men might not know. We give up the whole lost and found box of meanings to confident whispering strangers.
All this I knew before, but I take it strangely personally that others don't come to know it faster. Surely for every year I've aged the world has! But that's not how these things work. And some of this is that I'm wrong: nearly every individual critic's list including one or two of my favorites also contained at least one disqualifier. My own blinders and obsessions are too close in to make out, presumably. Close attention to what seem like grave mistakes may be one way to notice your own.
Or it may be a terrible waste of time among grave mistakes that teach nothing but unhelpfully unique ways to fail? I take it Sight and Sound stopped at 250 to contrast themselves with the imdb Top 250 list. I wonder which list I'll end up respecting more, if I keep going.
I find a lot of the ones I've seen pretty weak or ridiculous too, like Ugetsu. Others I can at least understand fitting well with recognizable aesthetics I don't happen to share, or as weaker imitations of better things viewers happen to have missed, not all of them films (can any lover of Peer Gynt have much respect for Pickpocket)?
And my narcissist enemy pops up often here, and the related-looking but distinct (because compatible with good will) failure of becoming enamored with incommunicable significances - projection of the sense of profundity excites people, sometimes more than actual excellence because it's not clear what these numinous new men might not know. We give up the whole lost and found box of meanings to confident whispering strangers.
All this I knew before, but I take it strangely personally that others don't come to know it faster. Surely for every year I've aged the world has! But that's not how these things work. And some of this is that I'm wrong: nearly every individual critic's list including one or two of my favorites also contained at least one disqualifier. My own blinders and obsessions are too close in to make out, presumably. Close attention to what seem like grave mistakes may be one way to notice your own.
Or it may be a terrible waste of time among grave mistakes that teach nothing but unhelpfully unique ways to fail? I take it Sight and Sound stopped at 250 to contrast themselves with the imdb Top 250 list. I wonder which list I'll end up respecting more, if I keep going.
