The Canon
How to Think about Changing Critical Standards for Films
“I think The Piano was in a different language — a different cinematic language — than I had ever seen. And when I saw it when I was probably 15, it just went in straight. I didn't have to do any translating from a language that wasn't my own.”
This is Maggie Gyllenhaal, in 2021, describing the first time she watched a Jane Campion film.
The Piano (1993) Jan Chapman productions
I have thought a lot about this quote since reading it. The language is personal. it describes a movie as a kind of physical gift, which can fit or not fit the viewer. Gyllenhaal gives us a different language to describe the best movies. The best are not necessarily the most ambitious, but the ones that fit us the most. And so the canon becomes more personal. Your own personal canon is a collection of movies that fit you the most.
Yet I also believe there are objective standards when evaluating movies.
“2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Stalker”, “The Tree of Life.” These are movies which aim to explain human nature and trace thousands of years of evolution and earthly beauty. And they marshal skilled cinematographers and talented composers and skilled actors to make the films impressive in every technical sense. I think it is right that those movies be given weight in these discussions. They center on American men or Russian men and build on a long literary and storytelling tradition. They also innovate, especially 2001 and Stalker. We can each think what we want about them (I love “Stalker”, really love parts of “The Tree of Life”, and am impressed by, but have no affection for “2001.”)
Their canonization is a shortcut, a sign pointing young cinephiles, as well as older people discovering art films for the first time in their life, a couple of highlights on the trail. “These are peaks”, the canon says. “These are highlights.”
Then there are the films made with literary density. David Lean and James Ivory and Francis Ford Coppola and Ang Lee and even a young Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivans’ Childhood and Solaris are literary adaptations) took acclaimed novels and spent years adapting the psychologically rich characters and editing the films with an eye toward performances and emotional and moral dilemmas. These movies aim to recreate a period, understand the social pressures and comforts of the time, and get good performances from the classically trained or method trained actors. There is skill that can be measured in this ambition to tell a character driven story. We remember the adaptations that fulfill this clear ambition the most.
This canonization and respect shown to great accomplishments is what may be wiped out as the canon is “remade, decolonized, diversified, reconstituted…”
In 2022, Sight and Sound Magazine, the publication of the British Film Institute, released its decennial list of “Best Films of All Time.” They took lists of ten from critics around the world and ranked two hundred fifty movies. For decades, “Citizen Kane” and “Vertigo”, two American classics centered on white men, had held the top spot. Then, in 2022, “Jeanne Dielmann, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1980 Brussels” was given the top spot. Here is what they say about it.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Paul Schrader, American film director and screenwriter, posted this on Facebook.
I do agree with Schrader that the Jeanne Dielmann triumph was probably orchestrated. The effort to reconstruct the canon, or “disrupt the white male hegemony”, as literary canon revisionists say, is a big problem for me as it carries a kind of bitterness. The women and minorities who vote for Chantal Akerman or Agnes Varda as the greatest filmmaker in history are attempting provocation and seeing politics in everything.
They want to tear down films made by white men that have become consensus classics (as decided by white men) but they cannot articulate even why those films are revered. If you asked them why “The Third Man” is so insightful regarding European history and paranoia and the vacuum of a state and the rule of law, they cannot think through that.
Personally, I love “Wanda”, the Barbara Loden film. Also “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and Elaine May’s films. Those movies deserve to be toward the top of any list. But they are not better written than “Chinatown” or more imaginative than “Amadeus” or more philosophically stimulating than “Stalker.” And the people who say, as these critics do, that women directed films are better “for them” often are not Maggie Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal voices why Jane Campions’ film is so strong for her, personally. Gyllenhaal also lists a Paul Thomas Anderson film about an upper class Englishman on her list.
But many of the other “Jeanne Dielmann” voters do not do that. They have only learned how to topple consensus great films and lift up films that center women, minorities. They are cultural vandals, enjoying toppling great works because of their political motivation. They should focus on carving out a place for their favorite films that center women but stop trying to tear down the “Citizen Kanes” and “8 1/2s” just so they can get revenge on now dead film critics who made the canon.
Love this!