Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Do you have fifteen hours to spare this weekend? Cause if you do, the New York Times film critic A. O. Scott is falling all over himself, drunk with delight, about a new and lengthy documentary that charts the history of film:
A more scholarly version of this double impulse [for old fashioned cinema a la "Hugo" and "The Artist"] — a history-minded cinephilia that is at once elegiac and celebratory, passionate and skeptical — informs “The Story of Film: An Odyssey.” Presented in eight chapters and clocking in at 900 minutes, this sprawling documentary, which takes up residence on Wednesday at the Museum of Modern Art, is notable for its epic ambition and for its conciseness. Cinema may be a relatively young art form, but its rapid evolution and global reach make its history dauntingly complex . . .
He wants to tell the whole story, from Genesis to Revelation, as the saying goes, but he also wants this vast chronicle to have a shape and a point: themes and patterns amid the names, places and images. He succeeds to an impressive extent. The results of his dogged research, compulsive travel and hard thinking are exemplary, useful and sometimes thrilling.
I don't care how "thrilling" and "dauntingly complex" the history of film is, the idea of a fifteen-hour film about film is farcically funny, isn't it? Call me a philistine, but it's like, didn't the creators of the film have the budget for an editor? Scott thinks the film is notable for its "epic ambition and for its conciseness." Concise? Seriously?
The length of this film reminds me of those 1,000-page tomes that are getting published more and more these days—they're usually about some obscure topic, written by some professor you've never heard of, who teaches at some university you've never heard of, and yet gets a 5,000-word review in the New York Review of Books. You know the type of books I mean.
Who are these books written for? Or, more to the point, who is a 900-minute documentary created for? Their length--or "comprehensiveness," as the critic would put it—seems to be a slap in the face to an ordinary audience, who doesn't have the time or enthusiasm to absorb every. Little. Detail. The only people charmed by such "comprehensiveness" are academics and the literati: i.e., the authors, and in this case filmmakers, who get paid to create these works, and the critics, who get paid to review them. (Going full circle, the Odyssey's director and narrator, Mark Cousins, is a former film critic himself).
And only a critic like Scott would revel in this 15-hour film that is an "invigorated compendium of conventional wisdom . . . forthright in [its] feminism" (as Scott puts it). Only a critic like Scott would write this paragraph about it:
The first section also signals the agenda of the inquiry as a whole. It is global in scope, attentive to the political implications of film, generally director-centric and closely attuned to matters of form. There are interviews with academics and filmmakers, visits to cinematic landmarks and a wealth of wonderful clips.
The inquiry? Oh, boy.
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May '10
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
If it were made by Ken Burns would you write such a thing? His original baseball documentary clocked in at 18.5 hours.
Aug '10
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
To be fair, couldn't one argue it's simply a documentary tv series shown all at once?
If it's going to be seen by a decent number of people, that's how its gonna hafta be distributed.
Aug '10
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
What he said.
Jul '11
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
I love the analogy to useless 1000 page works. Our book club read one on Mithridates that was utter liberal horse cookies. Never ever trust the N.Y.Times. I cannot remember if they reviewed this one but I stand by the statement anyway.
Well now I have a toss up this weekend, 15 hours of the global implication of film as viewed through a liberal agenda or an intoxicated super bowl extravaganza. Decisions decisions.
Mar '11
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Misthiocracy: To be fair, couldn't one argue it's simply a documentary tv series shown all at once?
If it's going to be seen by a decent number of people, that's how its gonna hafta be distributed. · 1 minute ago
But in a theater? It's going to need a title to sum up the theater experience.
The Story of Film: An Ordeal.
Yeah, that's definitely an improvement.
Jul '11
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
There's no crying in baseball documentaries.
May '10
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Hey, Philistine. Welcome to the club.
Aug '11
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Well . . . I might find it interesting. I'm working on a concept that takes, as its basis, the idea that our culture of shared stories no longer comes from written works, but from film. So from a scholarly standpoint, I would probably really dig this.
But if I want to spend half the day with a movie, it'll probably be Lord of the Rings.
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Yes I would! And without hesitation! If watching baseball on television is like watching paint dry, then I can't imagine what watching a 19-hour documentary about baseball would be like.
Aug '10
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Percival
Misthiocracy: To be fair, couldn't one argue it's simply a documentary tv series shown all at once?
If it's going to be seen by a decent number of people, that's how its gonna hafta be distributed. · 1 minute ago
But in a theater? It's going to need a title to sum up the theater experience.
The Story of Film: An Ordeal.
Yeah, that's definitely an improvement. · 2 minutes ago
It's not gonna be seen by many people in the theatre. At most, a limited release for one or two weekends in LA and NYC.
Any wider audience for the content will be on tv, spread over 15 weeks.
Unless the filmmaker is a complete idiot.
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Thanks!
May '11
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Someday I am going to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and the four seasons of 24 I have on DVD. Then I will solve world hunger in my spare time.
Aug '10
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Emily Esfahani Smith
Yes I would! And without hesitation! If watching baseball on television is like watching paint dry, then I can't imagine what watching a 19-hour documentary about baseball would be like. · 1 minute ago
Ok then, how about a 19-week documentary series about shoes, or some other girly subject. ;-)
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Misthiocracy
Emily Esfahani Smith
Yes I would! And without hesitation! If watching baseball on television is like watching paint dry, then I can't imagine what watching a 19-hour documentary about baseball would be like. · 1 minute ago
Ok then, how about a 19-week documentary series about shoes, or some other girly subject. ;-) · 1 minute ago
Come on, Misthiocracy, give me more credit than that!
Aug '11
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
From that point of view, many of us already submit ourselves to extremely lengthy films. After all, what is a season of 24 but a single day-long movie?
Oct '11
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Emily Esfahani Smith
Misthiocracy
Emily Esfahani Smith
Yes I would! And without hesitation! If watching baseball on television is like watching paint dry, then I can't imagine what watching a 19-hour documentary about baseball would be like. · 1 minute ago
Ok then, how about a 19-week documentary series about shoes, or some other girly subject. ;-) · 1 minute ago
Come on, Misthiocracy, give me more credit than that! · 0 minutes ago
Burns' Civil War? I don't recall how long it was, but I made an effort to tune in, and sat spellbound through all of it.
Mar '11
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Emily Esfahani Smith
Yes I would! And without hesitation! If watching baseball on television is like watching paint dry, then I can't imagine what watching a 19-hour documentary about baseball would be like. · 7 minutes ago
Pitchers and Catchers report: 17 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes.
Aug '10
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Doesn't anyone remember Berlin Alexanderplatz ?
Not that I had the patience to see it , that was worn thin during a screening of Napoleon by Abel Gance. That was like five hours long, and silent. But the KC Symphony played the score, with Francis F Coppola's dad conducting. That, and a couple bottles of wine, were what made it barely bearable.
I think I missed Ken Burns last opus, was it this one ?
Nov '11
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Actually, it does sound kind of dumb (in a navel-gazing sort of way).
I seriously doubt that you can summarize the history of film neatly in 15, 20, or even 100 hours.
Any professional in cinema or the visual media would know that a spectator has a certain physical limit to enjoy a film. Less is usually more, especially in a movie.
Oct '10
Re: Who Has Time for a 15-Hour Film? A Film Critic, That's Who.
Might be interesting when available online, not in theatres. Many early films had run times of 6 to 8 hours, true sagas. As the history of marketing film goes, the theatre owners demanded the studios edit the works run time down. This was in order to sell more tickets during any given day. A lot of valuable work fell to the cutting room floor with those demands.
At least we have options of rewind, etc. today. Will leave out any comments on the short attention spans of this day.