Table of Contents:
1. The Greats, by August Thompson
2. Favorites, by Cody Davis
The Greats by August Thompson
Good films are practically dime a dozen. There are so many that the term good is basically worn out. Movies can be good for an array of reasons: from so-bad-it’s-good (Con Air) to simply entertaining good (My Bloody Valentine 3D), to good in the literal sense, nothing spectacular, but still undeniably charming (The Fugitive). But a Great Film is truly a marvel. Calling a film “Great” with a capital G is like giving it a title; it’s the “Dame” in the Dame Judi Dench, the “Dude” in His Dudeness. It’s separating it from the piles of drivel and putting it in a place of immortality, it’s saying “this film deserves a place in history.” It’s calling it a masterpiece.
In his book, The Great Movies, esteemed critic and Pulitzer Prize winner Roger Ebert attempts to chronicle the movies that transcend mediocrity and have created waves within the history of cinema. Those relatively few beauties that leave an impression not simply because of nostalgia or entertainment, but because they change something about who you are; they impact you emotionally and intellectually. Ebert is obviously a very learned man when it comes to film, and his tastes can easily be trusted. You have to respect a man that harbors such a wise eclecticism when choosing Great Films: films as varied as Do The Right Thing, The “Up” Documentaries, 8 1/2, and The Godfather all get their turn. Ebert’s relationship with the 100 films in his book is intimate; he has viewed each one dozens of times, many of them analyzed frame by frame. They are from a cornucopia of genres and decades, they share many themes and ideas but are each incredibly unique. They are, and continue to be, Great Movies.
There are many things that have to come together properly in order to make a Great or even good film. Making a movie is much like traversing a field of mines. Sure, surviving the first ten feet might make you want to dance with joy (although dancing is in no way recommended in a mine field), but there’s still the daunting fact that you have a few explosive miles left to travel before you can celebrate properly. Such is the nature of the beast, and why Great Films are so damn impressive.
As Ebert states in his book, movies are an incredibly personal and empathetic experience; it’s as if we’re looking through a portal into the mind of the creator. Movies are a unique form of media. We are assaulted by emotion, sight, and sound; teleported from our world into another. At least, that’s the goal. And that’s why Great Films are so wonderful: they pull this off subtly and brilliantly. As if you’ve fallen asleep and woken up in the film you’re viewing, unaware that much has changed. Because of this, a film has to be, above all else, convincing.
A convincing movie is a whole and complete movie, and Great Films are puzzles without any missing pieces. Ebert, in his look at Fargo, speaks of the necessity of a complete and authentic film, because of what said authenticity allows. Great, convincing films dazzle us, make us feel perplexed, they have the capacity to frustrate and enamor; but in the end the viewer is always able to step back and see a complete image without any jagged holes. To accomplish this, a great many things must go ever-so-well. A Great Film is defined by the careful, conscious choices of the director, writer, and actors, but also from a touch of fate through circumstances that are unforeseeable, unrehearsed, unscripted. To borrow from some age-old life advice: in making a Great Film, it’s the little things that count.
And Ebert stresses that much of superb filmmaking is in nuance. The choices of the director frequently sell a movie and assure the viewer won’t be startled out of the cinematic dream movies induce. It’s small choices that make a film real, no matter how unlikely the scenario: be it Kubrick’s choice to tell Slim Pickens that Dr. Strangelove was a serious film, not a black satire, or Scorcese’s toying with the size of the rings in Raging Bull, or even Lucas refusing to add opening credits to Star Wars. It’s these choices, as small as they may seem, that make a film run so well. Would it have been the same if Pickens played his nuclear-bomb-riding-cowboy with a sly smirk? Would we have felt the isolation of Jake LaMotta if the fight scenes were shot conventionally? Would Star Wars have retained the epic feeling of the infinity of space had the opening shots been marred by things like: “And Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, the warrior with a heart of gold!”? The answer is a concise no.
It’s easy to say “who would’ve thought?” when referring to these choices. Who would have thought that a repositioning of a camera or a changing of a score would transform a film and drastically improve its quality? Ebert answers that airy rhetorical simply: the director. In looking at 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ebert stresses Kubrick’s masterful choice of score: “Although Kubrick commissioned an original score from Alex North, he used classical recordings as a temporary track while editing the film, and they worked so well that he kept them. This was a crucial decision.” It’s nearly impossible to imagine 2001, a film of such magnitude, without its now-iconic score. The score encapsulates the mood so perfectly that, had Kubrick chosen the planned score, much of the movie’s cosmic power could have been lost. Ebert commends his use of Thus Spake Zarathustra, for instance, which captures the fierce boldness of the intelligence of man. Strauss’s Zarathustra allows for that powerful scene of ape enlightenment to capture the infinity of a great mind, by channeling the fervor of minds as audacious as Nietzsche’s. And this effect, as Ebert perfectly summarizes, gives the scene its feel: “It is cold, frightening, magnificent.”
Choices like this not only impact the film, but show a lot about the filmmakers. In his essay on Metropolis, Ebert states that “Lang’s directorial style was not unlike the approach of the villain in the film.” Ebert explains that Lang treated his cast and crew with a precision accentuated by cruelty in order to get what he wanted. And in doing so, Lang was able to perfectly capture the soul of Metropolis, or perhaps Metropolis was able to capture the soul of Lang: it’s cold, it’s mean, it’s mechanic and doesn’t allow for humanity. This is true of all Great Films, in that each one reflects what the director or writer is through the choices they make. We get that Quentin Tarantino fancies himself as a fast-talking, cool motherfucker from Pulp Fiction, just as we understand that Kubrick is a man of cosmic thought from 2001, or that PT Anderson is a creature of struggle from There Will Be Blood. “[Movies] allow us to enter other minds… by seeing the world as another person sees it.” Ebert writes.
But this is not meant to downplay the effect that other key players have on a film. A combination of impeccable scriptwriting and chameleon performances are also required to make a Great Film. As Ebert notes on Chinatown, these factors are essentials: “[Jack Nicholson’s] performance is key in keeping Chinatown from becoming just a genre crime picture—that, and a Robert Towne screenplay that evokes an older Los Angeles, a small city in a large dessert.” Ebert’s use of the word evoke is choice in describing the function of script and actor. It’s up to the actors and the writer to evoke, to draw out, emotions from the audience. Towne was able to evoke the dark nostalgia of early LA, as Nicholson was able to, in the words of Ebert, evoke feelings of “a nice, sad man” caught up in madness.
And the effect actors and writers have on the emotion of a film is constant; for instance, Anthony Hopkins gives a unique performance in The Silence of The Lambs because he is able to make the audience feel such a wide array of emotions. Hopkins’ choice to refrain from blinking while speaking makes us fear Lector; he is unnatural, ungodly. Screenwriter Ted Tally’s brilliant lines (“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti”) make us nervous; we respect Lector’s mind but question his motives. We fear him, we feel unease when is on screen, and yet, because of the powerful acting and writing, we are entranced. Ebert writes that “One key to [Silence’s] appeal is that audiences like Hannibal Lector… because Hopkins, in a still, sly way, brings such wit and style to the character.” Hopkins and screenwriter Ted Tally managed to create a character of such intense grotesqueness and nuanced wit that we can’t help but like him; a character that makes the audience respond emotionally, through fear and anxiety, and, Ebert points out, manages creates sympathy for himself, in a perverse way, and the struggling Clarice.
As mentioned before, the most amazing thing about film is that, despite meticulous casting, scripting, direction, scoring and editing, the best moments frequently come from accidents and circumstance. Circumstance has given us some of the greatest moments in cinema history: Hoffman’s forgetting of his final line in The Graduate, for example, gives us the now iconic, longing ending. Ebert summed up the beauty and power of the unexpected best when describing an unplanned cloud in a shot in Bonnie and Clyde: “Today the cloud could be generated by computers; on the day the scene was filmed in Texas, it was a perfectly timed accident of nature.” The effect that this happenstance had was great: “The cloud carries foreboding: Bonnie and Clyde are doomed, and uneasily realize it.” He’s right, by the way. It’s absolutely perfect.
So what does it all add up to? Where do all these small choices and moments lead us? For this, I turn to another Great Film: Requiem For A Dream. The film’s most powerful moment, the one that shook me to the core and gnawed at me for months afterwards, came from a combination of all the usual careful choices and a total accident. The scene shows a steady shot of Ellen Burstyn lamenting to her son the fears and pains of being old, of being alone. She has no purpose, no reason to get up in the morning. Burstyn is masterful in this moment; I could see my grandmother in the same state of weepy-mania, robbed of her dignity by the cruelties of old age. The dialogue bleeds emotion and terror—“Why should I even make the bed, or wash the dishes? I do them, but why should I? I'm alone.” It’s well shot; a carefully placed frame puts Burstyn to the far left, isolated. Halfway through her monologue, as Burstyn’s emotions rise, the shot drifts, moving in on her face. And this slight movement, so small it’s nearly negligible, evokes just as much sadness as anything else in the movie. We feel the walls closing in on her as she becomes more frantic, more desperate. The beauty is that it was unintentional: the cinematographer began weeping halfway through the shot, moving the camera on accident. It was all of it, the sense of entrapment caused by the direction, the script, the acting, the accidental cinematography, that made me cry silent tears as I sat with my friends on a sunny, summer day. It all added up to what movies strive for, and what makes Great Films so distinct: it made me feel raw, honest emotion.
Great Films, ultimately, are those that create a seamless world through many careful combinations of talent and ability, aided by chance, all for one purpose: to make you feel. It doesn’t matter what that emotion is, it’s a case by case story. Still, films are landmarks throughout our lives that signify honest thought and feelings. Ebert frequently pushes the idea that movies are immortal because they repeat eternal themes and the common bonds of humanity. In short, master filmmakers do not understand the words “stealing” and “plagiarism.” Every Great Film steals from an older film, and every Great Old Film steals from the ageless and innate conventions of storytelling. But that’s the fun. They’re familiar, yet so dangerously unique. We see a lot of what we know in films like Casablanca or Star Wars, things we’ve seen before. But this does not dishearten the viewer; in fact it empowers. We use this casual familiarity to make films a part of our lives and culture. To the point where films are now our reference for humanity’s undying themes and emotions: “You talking to me?” is now our line for loneliness and rage, a shot of a bloody horse’s head signifies ruthless power, and “That’s no moon!” shows unease, a disturbance (in the force), if you will. Movies are powerful because they encapsulate so much of the struggle and joy of human existence, because they are so personal yet so universal. When all is said and done, a Great Film will have left you feeling shook up, maybe even gutted and bled. A Great Film is one that emotion out of you and leaves you with new insights, a new understanding. As Ebert put it, “Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.”
Essay: FAVORITES, by Cody Davis
How many times have you been asked this question: “What’s your favorite movie?” It’s one of those ubiquitous getting-to-know-you questions, one of the first you might ask someone you’ve just met. People ask it almost every other day, yet it remains a difficult question to answer; my responses, at least, have varied greatly and frequently over the years. That’s because the question itself entails another question: what is a “favorite” movie? Is it the “best” movie you’ve ever seen? Is it the most fun? Is it a guilty pleasure? Is it a movie you can watch over and over and never get bored of? All of these interpretations can be used to define “favorite” in some context; I’ve certainly waffled back and forth between telling people my favorite movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey (which I consider to be the “best” film ever made), Raiders of the Lost Ark (the most fun), The Thing (a guilty pleasure), and The Empire Strikes Back (the only movie I can watch twice in a day and not get annoyed by it). And yet none of them seems to satisfy the question’s true intent.
A favorite movie has to be something extraordinary, but it need not be so impersonally defined as the “best” movie ever made. When we say a movie is the best, we’re making an argument: for example, I think that 2001 is the best movie ever made, and that everybody else should think so; I think it is so impeccably produced, so masterfully directed, so engaging in its haunting incompleteness, that as an accomplishment in film it is utterly unparalleled, and I will do my best to convince those who don’t share these views to see from my perspective. In a perfect world, everyone would have the same opinion regarding the “best” movie, or at least there seems to be the possibility for a sort of scientific consensus. This is illustrated best, I think, by the AFI’s list of the top 100 American films ever made. Such a list’s existence, and the fact that it is at the very least an accepted benchmark when discussing the history of cinema, proves that the categorization and hierarchization of “best” movies is not such a ridiculous conceit; even the list’s detractors must admit that it makes some sort of scientific consensus on the subject seem remotely plausible. However, AFI will never release a list of the homogenized 100 “favorite” movies of America. It’s a laughable idea; thus, it’s obvious that “favorite” must be distinct from “best.” My ten-to-sixteen-year-old self might balk at this, but I can comfortably say that 2001 is not my favorite movie.
Saying that a favorite movie should be the most fun movie is getting closer to the truth, but it’s still faulty. Watching Raiders of the Lost Ark is, by all accounts, an indecently fun experience. It’s so fast-paced that you might assume at first glance that it’s brainless, but I don’t think there’s a wittier moment in film than when Indiana Jones (in reality a very tired, dysentery-afflicted Harrison Ford) wearily opts out of a telegraphed sword fight with an imposing thug, deciding instead to just shoot him with his revolver. Raiders is a model of efficient, light-hearted cinema, and it’s a blast to see on screen. But is that all we’re talking about when we assign such an important-seeming qualifier as “favorite” to a piece of art? A blast? Are we to exclude all dramas from being considered favorites because they lack the fun of movies like the Indiana Joneses and Star Wars’ of the world? No, surely not; fun must be only a part of the equation, because fun is only one of the myriad, blurry range of emotions humans are capable of, and movies seek to elicit.
Which brings me to the crux of my argument: the only goal that can be said to apply to every film is the goal of achieving an emotional response from its viewers, whatever that emotion may be, and so, in my opinion, the most sensible definition of a “favorite” movie is the movie which is capable of wringing the most intense emotional response from an individual. Thus, it is entirely a personal affair; emotional responses are largely independent of the films themselves. Consider a man forced to review a stoner comedy like, say, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle the day after a painful divorce: there is a very good chance that that particular somebody is not going to be particularly pleased with the movie he’s watching, though it might be hilarious for anyone else, and possibly him as well on any other day. Now consider the same man going to review a film like Revolutionary Road; the intense, brooding emotion of the film is far more likely to affect him on a visceral level than it normally would be, because of the proximity of the emotions elicited by the film to the emotions he’s currently experiencing in real life.
What we should look for, then, when discussing each of our personal favorite films, is emotional resonance: just as in physics systems oscillate with greater amplitudes at certain frequencies, films can impact us more at certain points of our lives. It is because of this that I can say without shame that 2001 is further away from being my favorite film than Will Ferrel’s Anchorman. I watch Anchorman now, and I enjoy it thoroughly, but there’s a large part of me that wonders: if I had seen it for the first time at this age, would I even like it? Anchorman is sophomoric to the point of childishness, crude and cheap in its humor, and there’s hardly a plot to be seen. But it also came out when I was in eighth grade. To this day, I’ve never laughed as hard in a theater as I did the day I saw Anchorman with my friend Keith Black, who I haven’t been close with in years. And so, my viewings of the film today are heavily informed (and heavily boosted) by a heaping portion of nostalgia, thus adding a new dimension of emotion that the film conveys to me and only me.
Nostalgia is probably the most important element in determining our favorite films. It is, without doubt, one of the strongest emotions humans feel: how many times have you looked at an old picture, or a childhood toy, and felt tangible pulls at your heartstrings within your chest? Just sitting writing this essay, I’m struck by a powerful urge to dial Keith Black’s number in my phone, to reminisce, to possibly recapture what I’ve lost in the years since we were friends. Our younger years, particularly our childhoods, are shrouded in a golden mist; movies, and all other immutable pieces of art, which stay young as we age, serve as a barge tour through that mist. It’s because of this that most people’s favorite films will invariably be ones they saw as a child or a young adult (which could, in turn, account for why every critic on the face of the earth seems to think that older films are in general superior to those made today: they grew up with those films). The younger we are when we see a film, the more nostalgia it’s likely to generate upon viewing it a decade later.
It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve decided on a “favorite” film; my indecision is a thing of the past. It isn’t the best movie, it isn’t the most fun, it’s not a guilty pleasure, and I can’t watch it more than a few times a year, but Princess Mononoke affects me in ways that no other film has or ever will. I first saw Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece when I was seven years old. I was far too young to be watching it. Mononoke is incredibly violent: its protagonist, Ashitaka, is cursed by a disgraced God, his arm inflicted with a demon that will eventually riddle him with disease and consume him but which also grants him savage fighting abilities; a single arrow flicked from his bow is capable of decapitating pursuing mercenaries. Needless to say, just being able to watch something like that was exciting at my age. Apparently my parents were soothed by the fact that it was just “a cartoon,” because I remember not being allowed to see Die Hard a few weeks later. I might need to jog my memory, but I’m pretty sure Die Hard didn’t show anybody’s limbs getting chopped off; Princess Mononoke has that base covered in the opening ten minutes. So there was a sort of secret pleasure I got from seeing something obviously intended for mature viewers. It wasn’t the first inappropriate movie I’d seen; that was Psycho, when I fooled my dad with the old-timey ‘G’ rating on the box at blockbuster. But for some reason Mononoke felt more potent.
That’s because it introduced me to an emotion I’d never even experienced before: love. I fell in love with San, the eponymous princess of beasts. I can’t be sure what did it. I only know that the love story in Princess Mononoke affected me violently, and it has in one way or another informed every single relationship I’ve ever been in; since I’ve always seen myself as an Ashitaka, in every girl I look for San. Mononoke’s love story is simplistic, but in that simplicity is its strength: it relies on the seemingly tired concept of ‘love at first sight,’ but the revelation is that it argues compellingly in the defense of such love; who wouldn’t fall immediately for a girl like San? Ashitaka first sees San across a river, flanked by three giant wolf-gods. The wolves are battle-weary; only San seems bursting with energy, a warrior’s fervor, as she sucks blood from a poisoned wound in the mother wolf’s neck, leaving her mouth and chin covered in sticky red. This is how her and Ashitaka first exchange words: Ashitaka yells to them, asking naively if they are gods and won’t they please tell him the way through the forest; only San answers. After a few moments, standing austerely straight with the wolves at her back, covered in blood and animal skins, she has two simple words for him: “Go away.” San is dangerous, mature, independent, violent, and even beautiful. She was, and remains, my definition of the perfect woman.
San is the perfect woman, but she isn’t a woman; she’s a girl. Mononoke’s love story occurs between two young people, probably still in their teens. And yet Miyazaki doesn’t treat their love condescendingly, as most adults would when filming a teenage couple. There’s no ‘puppy love’ here. What occurs between San and Ashitaka is never once implied to be anything other than deadly serious. Miyazaki imbues their relationship with the romantic notion of timelessness; San and Ashitaka are perfect for one another, and the idea of them ever being with anyone else is so ludicrous as to be given no thought or credence at all. They surrender to their love absolutely, each one realizing that the other is their only possible counterpart. Even distance can’t rend the eternal bond they share. At the film’s tragic conclusion, San and Ashitaka are separated, San going to live in the forest and Ashitaka the human city of Iron Town. But they promise their love to one another anyway; they will have to be content with visiting often.
All of these elements I’ve always admired about San and Ashitaka’s love. But they hit me particularly hard when I was young; San shaped my perception of what love should be. Mononoke was the first movie I’d seen that treated a young romance as seriously as one between adults; I wanted that for myself. I wanted to find my San. And it taught me that love is all about surrendering yourself completely to it; the one quality above all that I’ve always searched for in a relationship is that quality of timelessness, that sense of assurance that the person I’m with could never be anyone else. I haven’t found it yet; I still await that day fervently. Maybe that’s why Princess Mononoke is still my favorite movie: every time I watch it, I’m reminded of the love that it inspired me to seek, that I’m still seeking to this day. I’m reminded that I still think such a love is possible.
That’s all I need to discuss to justify Princess Mononoke as my favorite film: the emotions and memories that it makes me experience. Plot considerations need not be considered at all. And there’s no reason for me to argue that it should be anyone else’s favorite movie. I don’t know anybody else who was an eight-year-old apparent romantic when they saw it. I don’t think the circumstances could ever be the same for anyone else. That, in and of itself, is beautiful. A favorite movie takes on a whole new importance when you realize that your relation to it is utterly unique, unlike the relation between you and “best.”
