In the past couple of months, I’ve been working my way through the Top 250 Films on Letterboxd. And at this point in my cinematic life, I’ve seen all of the English Language films and all of the “obvious” film. You know foreign films that, if you watch foreign films, you have already seen them. Like “8 1/2”, “Seven Samurai”, “Oldboy”, the works. So now I’m on to the lesser known films. The kind of stuff that I watch, and where I will usually like them in some capacity, I will bring them up to my film history professors and they will have never heard of them. An example of this is “Marketa Lazarová”, a German-Czech film that is amazing! I approached my film history professor and asked him what he thought of it and he had never heard of it. So I’m in that territory now. This territory also contains one of the worst things any film completionist fan can run into. The dreaded 3 hour plus film.
Now don’t get me wrong. There are a few times that a 3-hour film can be great. For example, my opinion for the most flawless film of all time is Lawrence of Arabia. But my god. Most of these films are so needlessly long.
If you ever want a good laugh, go check out the comments on Letterboxd’s Top 250. They are always arguing over the stupidest garbage that doesn’t matter because they all like jerking themselves off over how right they are. The argument this week is over whether or not a film called “La Flor” should be included in the list. “La Flor” is a film that screened at the New York Film Festival last year and was a film I was able to see. Another element of “La Flor” that you should be aware of, is that “La Flor” is 14 hours long. That’s right! A 14-hour long film. And you were beginning to get worried over “Avengers: Endgame” being around 2 hours and 50 minutes.
Here is another thing about “La Flor” that you should know. “La Flor” is hot garbage. It would be amazing if it was 2 hours long. But it’s not, and it does not need 14 god damn hours for it to tell it’s message.
I’ve seen so many films recently that are over 3 hours long that have no right to be that long. I got shit to do movie. I am giving you my time. Don’t be so god damn long for no reason. Hire a god damn editor you pathetic excuse of a cretin. “La Maman et La Putain”? You were good, but you could have been great if you were an hour and a half. “The Best of Youth”? Hot damn you don’t need to be 6 hours long. “Celine and Julie go Boating”? Why don’t you instead go cutting the pointless shit out of your movie? Often times the worst part of a good film is the runtime. And I am so god damn tired of going to see a movie that is over 3 hours long and having to sit through a worthless conversation. Figure out what is necessary and cut the rest out you meaningless liquid spine. God damn.
You can make an amazing film with multiple themes also an hour and a half. “Blindspotting” proved this last year. So stop making your films so fucking long when at the end of the day, the point of the film is ‘I’m sad and my wife won’t suck my dick’, get over yourself you Italian Prick. God damn.