Picking the Classics

Jaime J. Weinman has touched on a topic that fascinates me: trying to pick the movies that will be classics of the future. He has two posts on the topic: one looking at wannabe classics that turn out not to be (here), and one about the process of trying to pick what will hold up later on (here).

This is a topic that interests me a lot; too much, in fact to do it justice right now. But I thought I’d post a couple of quick thoughts in reaction to Weinman’s pieces, since otherwise who knows when I’d get around to it. (For long-time readers, I warn right now that I am going to be repeating all sorts of things I’ve said before that are scattered through the site.)

Weinman has noted the obvious category of movies that don’t age well: Oscar-baiting issues pieces, or middlebrow art films. This is a longstanding observation and complaint and I couldn’t put it better than Pauline Kael who in her landmark 1969 essay “Trash, Art and the Movies” complained about critics praising “ghastly ‘tour-de-force’ performances, movies based on ‘distinguished’ stage successes or prize-winning novels, or movies that are ‘worthwhile,’ that make a ‘contribution’ – ‘serious’ messagy movies.”

Fortunately, I think critics tend now to be fairly sceptical of such middlebrow movies: they might still win Best Picture, and they are still often widely admired, but I don’t think many people ever kid themselves they’ll be classics. Take a film like Frost/Nixon: I liked it, and it has been deservedly well reviewed, but I don’t think anyone thinks people will be watching it in ten or twenty years, let alone fifty. Even a much better film like Brokeback Mountain, which I think is an absolutely exquisite piece of work, is just too middlebrow to really be thought of as a classic. Weinman makes this point by referring to the oft-cited example of Stanley Kramer’s message movies (he mentions Judgment at Nuremburg, but think too of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner). The Oscar winner’s list is full of countless other examples of films that have disappeared down the cultural gurgler (whether deservedly or not): Out of Africa, Ordinary People, Gandhi, Amadeus, Driving Miss Daisy, etc, etc.

On the other side of the ledger I’d make two observations. Firstly, Weinman asks which movies his readers thought were classics the moment they saw them. I’d love to claim some great insight here, but I think only once have I done so immediately. That was Pulp Fiction, and I think that I really jumped on that just because I was at the right age – 19 – to feel I’d seen a really definitive movie experience and commit myself to it. (I note, too, that Pulp Fiction often turns up on lists of movies that were considered future classics but which didn’t stand the test of time, but I actually still feel pretty confident it will.) As much as I’d like to think I can instantly spot these things, if I was honest, I would say that its usually a year or two out that I’ll get a strong view that a film will last: a second viewing often helps to clarify things, and by then there’s often a sense that a cultural aura is building around a film as people discover (or rediscover) it on video or DVD. Napoleon Dynamite, Donnie Darko, and The Big Lebowski are definitive examples of this from recent years, although I wasn’t on any of those bandwagons. But I can say that a year or so out I was very sure of quite a few that I think will last: The Castle (which for the foreseeble will undoubtedly be the best remembered Australian film by Australians); Groundhog Day (also on Weinman’s list); The Matrix (suffering a lull right now because of its sequels, but long term this will be remembered at least as well as the inferior Blade Runner has been); Toy Story; Die Hard; and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (although while I still love this, I’m starting to waiver about its wider cultural impact) all come to mind.

The other point I’d make is that if you’re trying to spot future classics there is a simple rule: keep it lowbrow. I happen not to agree with Weinman’s suggestion of Clueless – I think its pleasant enough but pretty unremarkable – but he’s looking in the right sort of places. Respectable Oscar-baiting Hollywood movies usually don’t last. Art / foreign / independent films sometimes do, but to get enough cultural purchase they usually have to make a big impact at the time of their release, so you can usually see those coming. The rally unheralded classics though, are the films, shorts, or television shows that are dismissed as frivolous at the time, but championed and rediscovered later. I’ve made this point before about The Goodies (see this post), but there are many other examples of artists whose work was considered pretty disposable at the time but which has stood the test of time: some silent comedians like Buster Keaton (considered inferior at the time to Charlie Chaplin, but now considered an equal); vaudevillean sound comedians like The Marx Brothers; animators such as Tex Avery, Robert Clampett, and Chuck Jones; comedy directors like Frank Tashlin (who scores on two fronts as he was also a cartoon director); genre directors such as Howard Hawks, John Ford, Douglas Sirk; and so on. A couple of years ago I had a long discussion with a friend who had just re-seen Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and lamented that nothing as brilliant and subversive was made these days: I agreed it was a great film, but reminded him that at the time (and probably still) it was considered grossly inferior to the team’s TV show and seventies films. It was only in retrospect that people looked back and argued that Meaning of Life was really good; I suggested there were things coming out today that he wasn’t really thinking about that would hold up just as well over time (the suggestion I made at the time was South Park, which still strikes me as a reasonable example.)

I should clarify that this isn’t meant to be completely anti-elitist in tone: I don’t believe pop culture is better than “highbrow” or “art” cinema (for want of better terms). I do think, however, that the chances of seeing really good work are about the same in lowbrow and highbrow culture (again, for want of better terms), and that if you want to get in on the cultural ground floor, you can’t afford to be a snob.