30: Sifting the Canon

The 2022 Sight & Sound poll results dropped this past week. The unveiling of the list is an event; it's a snapshot of film tastes and critical and professional opinions, a chance for the industry to take stock of the art it values.

What concerns me about the list–and its reception–is the way it's presented and received. Best-of lists are an act of curation that get treated like a culmination, the definitive answer to the question of Which Movie Is Best in whatever category they're in. They might be as momentous as the Sight & Sound list (which comes out only once a decade), or as routine as the year-end list that every critic produces, or as banal as the mountain of listicles that come out every week about the best movies in a given genre, or on a given streaming service. In any case, the publication of the list hides the effort and thought that went into it. The list is so often treated as the final product, when it should be the start of the conversation.

I am by no means the first person to point out how lists are inherently flawed. Much has been made about Ackerman's Jeanne Dielman being voted #1, and about how the expansion of the industry professionals made the choice possible, and about how Sight & Sound either "went too far" in disrupting the canon (Paul Schraeder got mad on Facebook about the position of Jeanne Dielman on the list), or didn't go far enough (some critics have pointed out that there are no films from South America at all on the final product). The New York Times has an interactive piece about the rise and fall of titles in Sight & Sound's version of the canon over the years.

The overarching conversation is still about the list itself, and what should have been included, and where the inclusions landed. The list, as it's used and talked about today, is the product and the point, and not the films on the list. This shouldn't be the case! Lists are data, and data is unhelpful unless it's placed into context.

I've seen some conversations that give me hope about using the list as a springboard. There's a tweet making the rounds about the movies that dropped off the list entirely. I've appreciated the critics who have pointed out the lack of South American films, as well as the dearth of Black filmmakers and female filmmakers on the list. I'm excited to dig into the pieces of information that make up the list. I have so many questions. What did filmmakers choose, and how did that differ from what critics chose? What did each individual contributor choose? Did they give any reasons? What were their personal guidelines? Were they voting for their personal favorites, or for the films they feel best represent cinema as a whole, or the films they'd teach in an introductory class? Was their list a political statement, or an attempt to shake up a canon that is so entrenched, the same film made the top of the list for six decades straight?

My worry is that the 2022 Sight & Sound list will become another checklist, a challenge for cinephiles to complete, rather than a tool for widening horizons. The real strength of the Sight & Sound poll is not in the assembly of some final list of one hundred of the "best" films of all time. It's in the individual lists that are aggregated to create the official list, the reasoning behind why each of the films in those individual lists were chosen by the critics who chose them, and in the gaps made apparent by the final list itself. Read properly, the Sight & Sound list should be viewed as a film negative: a reverse image that gives us the pieces we need to assemble a story, and to understand ourselves as moviegoers better.

What I talked about:

On this week's Seeing & Believing episode, Kevin and I split over The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg's semiautobiographical memoir film, which is in theaters now. (To be fair to Kevin, he said his problems with the movie were more like quibbles, but we still got a lively conversation out of our joint review.) We also discussed Jacques Demy's sublimely colorful musical The Young Girls of Rochefort, which is a joy to watch.

What I listened to:

Spotify Wrapped is ridiculous, but it's a part of our cultural landscape. Mine told me what I already know: that I listen to a lot of the Mountain Goats and New Wave, and that I spent most of my time on the platform this year listening to film and video game scores. I can't think critically, either while writing or for my day job, to words with music. This playlist helps engage the back burners of my brain enough that I can focus on just the task in front of me.

What I'm reading:

White Noise by Don DeLillo, in advance of the movie's upcoming theatrical/streaming release. I've already seen the movie, and found myself baffled by it. I'm reading the book and planning to rewatch the movie in the hopes that I can detangle the pieces that left me unsure of what to think.

Subscribers to Commonweal magazine will also notice a recommendation for my book, Becoming Alien, in their December issue. Adam Fleming Petty included it in his list of books to consider as Christmas gifts. If you know someone who likes science fiction, feminism, theology, horror, or some combination of those ideas, they might like recieving a copy of my book as a gift!