by Sam Juliano
And the controversy has comenced over the choice of Chantel Ackerman’s Jeanne Dielman as the #`1 film in the Sight & Sound’s critics’ poll. The project is run every decade and after the announcement, social media has been overun with opinions, some toxic. Accusations of “woke” campaigning and rejoinders by some defending the results has led to some fascinating reading. I am not sure what I think at this point. For me Jeanne Dielman is NOT as great a film (by a long distance) as Tokyo Story, Vertigo, Citizen Kane, 2001 and others -I have always found it a rough slog to get through – but I DO get the voting strategy of incorporating films directed by women and blacks, and from outlier countries. Blindly anointing canonical choices is troubling, and yet, aren’t there some films that are simply transcendent, regardless of the gender and color of the directors who made them? I am in neither camp at this point, but I have always admired and respected the Sight & Sound pollings. Two conflicting opinions have been voiced by two men (the latter, Todd Sherman, is a close personal friend) which I have listed here. I have also enjoyed our regular reader and longtime friend Mark Smith’s commentary on last week’s MMD: Anyway, here is Brian’s take:
“I was actually prepared to make peace with a radically rejiggered Sight & Sound poll, with some reservations, until reading the following: -Sight & Sound hired a consultant who vowed on Twitter to “push hard on the straight white make film canon” and “set it on fire.” In other words, he entered into it as a kamikaze mission. -Eminent, veteran critic Michael Sragow (a longtime participant in the poll) writes, “This year, the editors requested that participants fill out a form profiling our race, age, and gender, with seven categories listed for gender. So I pushed the word count allowed in ‘Comments’ to the max — I wanted to celebrate my choices according to my own personal aesthetic, not my sociological profile.” Translated: A specific outcome was desired, so they weighed the results to their liking. If true: I’m sorry, this is not charting any way forward to progress. Fierce social engineering to foster a kind of…how to put this…weirdly retrograde tokenism is, to me, more racist and sexist and homophobic than the implicitly exclusionary tactics that these measures (faux-)attempt to ameliorate. Like so much else I have seen in the last couple years, it’s a wan, doctrinaire “capital P” Progressivism that sets the fight for social progress back, because it squanders once-in-a-generation initiatives, destabilizing rather than paving real, sustainable ways forward. That’s what most upsets me. Why and how? Because it fosters the heartiest of suspicions in its wake, and appears desperate on the part of the aggregator, hereby demeaning the artists and works that have been promoted under it. Whereas before, these works might have been overlooked (perhaps unfairly), now in the wake of the above red flags sowing doubt, they will be the butt of jokes. And THAT is unfair. Jeanne Dielman, as deserving a film as I think it is (I first saw it years ago in college and it honestly took my breath away) will be pinned to every dartboard for the foreseeable future. I hate that it will become a pawn for the cynicism of others, rather than simply the masterpiece that it is. All so self-anointed crusaders can feel powerful in their bubbles, even if for the short time this list makes news. You see all these esteemed people (folks who aren’t “conservative” or “regressive”) questioning the results? Though I didn’t think so at first, I now think there’s cause. It’s not because they squirmed seeing women and disenfranchised groups finally make the list. It’s because a once-in-a-decade poll about the “greatest movies of all time” got co-opted into some elaborate experiment in hollow, performative “empowerment.” And the egg is now on the faces of those who manipulated the results toward a desired outcome, furthering a political agenda but demeaning both the exercise…and that agenda. This is the same quagmire as the Academy only allowing the nomination of sufficiently “diverse“ films, regardless of the needs of the film story or the individual production requirements. Last year, I had lunch with someone very powerful on the international film scene, and he called this type of thing “cultural Stalinism.“ He did not mince words and his candor rather shocked me. And so many are so deep down the rabbit hole of “capital P” Progressivism that they will never be able to see how they are crippling the causes they claim to be advocating. I am finishing up a book for Oxford U Press on an overlooked female director who defied the odds during her time. She was a great lady, to my mind to my mind a certified legend, very sensible, she kicked ass in her day, and I really don’t think she would have approved. I once spoke with her about this, after the release of Selma years back. We both agreed that we as a society and as an industry should be carving out opportunities for those who wouldn’t otherwise get them. What we shouldn’t be doing is putting thumbs on scales in some misbegotten effort to “burn it all down,” which is what this news both intimates and portends. Stop this train, I want to get off. I was one of those who defended the Akerman, and faced some heat for it. Now…sorry, I feel pretty stupid for doing so, knowing what I know now. This is not “progress“ – Twitter warriors pursuing brownie points does not social progress yield. I’d actually call it regression. At what point do they impede a way forward? Additional note: Just because a particular film hits the third rail of the social zeitgeist does not automatically render it worthy of inclusion on a list of the greatest films of all time. We still need to be grading these works cinematically.”
And in response we have Todd’s brilliant take on the results:
Lucille and I watched THE INSPECTION on Saturday night in Paramus. This gay-themed film, featured a superlative lead peformance by the gifted African-American Jeremy Pope, who played a gay man who was thrown out of his house by his mother, short afterwards he joins the marines and is enventually -after physical abuse and ostracization – embraced by the corps. The film is austere and intimate, and builds in emotional power.
**** 1/2 of *****
Click on names for archives
Writers/Founders
Wonders in the Dark 
These are excellent points.
“Jeanne Dielman,” difficult but rewarding, absolutely belongs in the Top Ten. It’s been circulating since 1975.
The treasury of Iranian films could have been enlarged with more Kiarostami, specifically “Taste of Cherry.”
Somewhere in the detritus of my condo I have Marília Pera’s autograph. She was promoting “Pixote.” Absolute truth.
My new email, Sam.
Mark, I have never been a big fan of JEANNE DIELMAN, and I certainly do NOT consider it as great a film of TOKYO STORY, VERTIGO, 2001, SUNRISE, CITIZEN KANE and others even remotely, but i refuse to crash anyone’s party, and of course its win is a victory for feminist and gender orientation cinema. there has been a firestorm all over the internet, including at FB of course, and yes as a huge fan of A TASTE OF CHERRY I totally agree that it should be there!
And on those cold winter nights, Herschel, you can snuggle up to your Heisman. It’s a little lumpy but it rings. Oh, wait…
Seriously, why was this even close?
Hahahahahahahaha, I hear ya Mark! That’s all he has presently! It was 100,000 votes between them!
I have no problem with the new Sight and Sound top ten. It’s not my top ten but all these films are worthy of masterpiece status and deserve respect.
Duane, to be sure I was pleased with the Top Ten and have been promoting the S & S polling for months. I don’t need to be a huge fan of JD to acknowlege the poll’s admirable sponsorship of great cinema.
Choosing just ten is so difficult in this age of streaming and access that I think more and more respondents are making personal, eclectic choices and splitting the vote. Academics and critics have always used it as an opportunity to show off and choose something ‘important’, impossible to see or understand or both. Still disappointing to see some directors not take it seriously though (Christopher Petit with Ted 2 and Gidget goes Hawaiian, or SS Rajamouli’s with Kung Fu Panda and nine similar), also not to see more from outside the US and Europe. Seeing so many greats fall out from the top 100 might seem fairer if there had been more Indian, Chinese, Iranian, African or S American films in their place…gone are Wild Strawberries, La Grande Illusion, Lawrence of Arabia, Aguirre Wrath of God, Les enfants du paradis, La maman et la putain, Touch of Evil, L’Eclisse, Pickpocket etc.