Never Meta List I Didn't Like...

Or puns apparently.... But seriously: the Foreign Film Poll has set off a flurry of bloggy activity - lively conversations in many many places - Scanners, Cinebeats, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, Self-Styled Siren - to name a few.... It's hard to follow them all, and harder still to participate: so I am going to join the parade, and try to sum up some of my meta-list thoughts in one post here....

1) There have been quite a few remarks about the "warhorses" on the list - not to mention the influence of the Criterion collection - with the attendant sighing about lack of marginal films... But I think it is inevitable that the same bunch of films keep getting named in best of lists. There is a reason they keep coming back. As soon as you accept the idea that one film can be better than another film, or that a person can like one film more than they like another, you will find that people end up liking and praising the same films. Loosely, of course - but when you aggregate opinions, you will tend to get the same films over and over. Because whatever criteria we use to pick films for a list like this, we weren't born with them: we learned them. We learned them from somewhere - other people; the films and art itself. And the things that make films great, or make people love them, are, in the end, precisely the things that people share - great films show us the world in a way we respond to: they are great because of their ability to evoke that response. Films we love - it's the same thing. It's the ability to connect to us that makes films great and loved - so it follows that we who love them will also connect over what we love. Art is about what we share (including, of course, the fact that we are all unique.) I find the tendency of any such vote to end up with the same films normal, and basically a sing that it works. A feature, not a bug.

2) On the other hand... first: 25 films is an impossibly small sample. Michael Kerpan's comment here on the last list frenzy, that there are a couple thousand masterpieces in the world, is just about right. (Do I have a thousandth favorite film?8 1/2? probably an accident of the database, but the point: I've seen a lot of films, but lots of people have seen more - and I cam make a list of 1000 films and not come close to finishing the films I consider more or less essential viewing....) Makes voting an agony. A problem that is further confused by the question of auteurs and genres and such. Auteurism covers a lot of things, but one of the basic ones is this: that the director [and not necessarily just a director] brings a distinctive style, worldview, personality to the work, that makes the class of films - films by Ozu, Godard, Imamura, etc. - take on a value of its own, apart from the individual films. It creates a problem for voting - how do I choose, first of all, among the best films by a favorite director? I could pick 25 films from Ozu, Godard, Mizoguchi and Imamura that would be as good as the list I did submit. (And not just those four: any 4-5 of my favorites, that I've seen enough of would work - Renoir, Naruse, Kurosawa, Herzog, Bresson, Hou, Suzuki, Ichikawa, Wong Kar-wei, Rivette, etc.) At the same time, it seems odd to treat 4 Godard films as 4 films (or 8, which wouldn't have phased me in the least) - I see them as linked: as inseparable - in a way that shouldn't preclude putting 7 other films on the list. It's as if - I don't see M, say, as being the equivalent of 8 Godard films: I see M as being the equivalent of any of 8 Godard films.... Something like that....

3) All of which actually does have a point beyond second guessing my ballot. Certainly another theme of the conversations about this list is the lack of some commenters particular hobby horse. You can certainly see traces of that in my own comments on Chinese action films - which indeed I feel more strongly than I let on. Yes, I know I could have voted for A Touch of Zen, Peking Opera Blues and Project A II (which would be my indispensable three) - still, I was hoping someone would bail me out, the way they did by nominating Bresson and Suspiria and the like.... And I certainly find it troubling that directors like Hou and Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf didn't make it, or Eisenstein, or Olmi, or Ichikawa or - etc... or that Iranian films were stiffed (how did that happen, anyway?) or Indian (Ray's misfortunes have been much analyzed) - or Korean films; or African, middle European (not that I can help, Czech films and the like being a big hole in my viewing), or South and Central American. Even just the richness of genre films from Japan, Italy, China etc. - all very much under-represented.

Now - the problem should be pretty obvious. Never mind voting for films on their individual merits, or even auteurs - I just listed 8 or 9 types of films, plus some 11-12 directors (some overlap, maybe) that should have been represented (or were underrepresented) - even granting that I can't help much in filling in Czech or Hungarian films or Brazilian films, that's around 20 votes for types of films or directors alone.... Which gets back to the fact that 25 is not even close to a canon (though the 122 that were nominated, or the 400+ that received votes, comes closer) - but I think it also points to something important about canons. Last year, after Paul Shrader took a stab at naming a canon of films, I posted a comment somewhere about the difference between parameters and perimeters in canon formation. (Probably at Girish's or Andy Horbal's old site, somewhere.) Shrader dismissed filmmakers, genres, national cinemas, time and place as criteria of value in canon formation - but that is wrong. I think - that is what should underlie canon formation. Canons should be determined by their parameters: by the categories and types of things that are valuable. Not perimeters - by a list of things (films, since that's what this is about) that are in the canon, vs. those out. Now - applying this to a poll is not easy: you vote for films, as films.... But for the resulting list to be valuable, or to help form a viable canon, it should outline the types of films that are important. Which is to say, all films... But what this leads to - is seeing this list, these films, as the best examples of the types of things that have been done. What is important here is not a list of the best films - but a list of the best examples of types of films.

The best Ozu films; the best Kung-fu films; the best Bollywood films; the best contemplative films. That, I think, it where the process should lead. And in fact - that is where much of the conversation has gone - toward looking through the things that were missed by the first round of votes: listing all the types of films overlooked and the best films to represent those films. A very good thing. One hopes some more lists, or easily referenced posts come out of the conversations...

4) Finally, getting to mechanics: first - I wonder if the nominations would have been more improved by explicit vote trading? I'd have happily traded a vote for Youth of the Beast for a vote for an Imamura; someone surely could have come up with a Pather Panchali vote if they'd thought about it.... second - I hope we see a full list of all the films to get a nomination - I think that would do a lot more to expand the canon than the final winners will.... to that end, it might be interesting to run a similar vote on the films that explicitly did not make the final cut...

UPDATE: Yes, we will get a ful list - in comments at Copeland's place.