I have seen 109 out of the top 250 in the newest Sight and Sound critic’s poll, which is not bad, but not great for a fresh post-graduate researcher in the field of film studies. The poll proposes some kind of canon that I’m not averse too – not necessarily a definitive list of the greatest films of all time, which is impossible in subjective reality, but a list of films that define cinema since its birth. ‘Canon’ is a loaded term if we’re talking about around two hundred years of evolving arts criticism considering the unavoidable structures that it lives in. This is a canon of patriarchal, northern hemisphere, and bourgeoisie belongings, and so what is the essentiality of the chosen texts other than a smug roundabout of musky condescension? To alleviate this the latest S & S poll has opened itself up to the most critics and the most diverse bunch of critics, to get a more comprehensive and global view of the so-called canon. This has worked, because films have appeared after being dismissed completely in previous editions, which is a satisfying antipathy to that musky persuasion. However, there are more caveats to come, because that diverse group of critics is still burdened by non-diverse systems of exhibition and distribution, and whatever taste they developed within pre-existing hegemony. It is also true that films with reissues, such as in fancy Criterion versions, have fared better in the poll simply because they are more easily seen, and there’s an argument to be made that as the critics get younger and the older ones die off – some films that were key in cinema’s early stages will be forgotten. I would hope that a film’s longevity then becomes its strength, and that critics keep championing films that drift more and more into the past.
With all that aside, and with more to be said on how the chosen critics pick their films (I believe the consensus is that they list their favourite films, rather than profile a suggested canon), the 2022 poll is a representation of films that help to understand cinema as an entity, albeit still a relatively euro-centric one. This means that I should probably get around to watching the other 141 films that I haven’t seen, and along the way I may write about a few of them. Often watching these kinds of films is an enduring experience as much as an engaging one, and so this will be a long and unending process that I have zero intention of being regular about. It’s almost like a holistic homework task, and I’m not sure what I’m trying to achieve in the writing, other than a selfish categorisation of my own thoughts, meaning the notes will be brief and not a complete view of the films.
The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, 2000, S&S #67)
There is a quiet bliss in an 80-minute Agnes Varda documentary. An icon of cinema – Varda’s documentaries have an ethereal quality that make the watching experience one of pleasant melancholy. I weep at Faces Places (2017) as soon as it begins. The Gleaners and I is a study of French ‘gleaning’ – which is the act of picking up fallen crop that the farmers leave behind in their fields. For some this is a hobby, for others a survival, and for others a way of life. It’s an envious activity, scanning through French fields collecting a basket full of almost expired potatoes. Varda’s position in the film is looming as always, like a watchful guardian on the people she interviews – never judgemental but mockingly personable. I think I’m most taken by the ‘and I’ part of the film, in Varda’s interaction with gleaners and scavengers, and how she perceives this on a creative level – overlaying striking images of paintings over landscapes, and constantly fretting about the number of lorries on the motorways.
The attraction to live like the man at the end of the film – a free night-school teacher, who every morning scavenges the left-behind vegetables in the Paris markets, is more of a curiosity than it is a desire, and the contemporary world’s wastefulness is the thought that occurs, an impossible quandary of sheer human usage that we go through every day. Like much of great cinema and great literature, Varda manages to capture the entire human psyche through an incredibly specific subject, whilst passively theorizing on the artistic self through the work of the everyday human.
Related film in the poll that I’ve already seen: Varda’s French New Wave fundamental Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962, #14)– an example of the movement that dialogizes in reality, that has been deservedly revaluated due to the increase in critical viewpoints in the listing.
ROB'S FOCUS PULL 