“No good movie is too long, just as no bad movie is short enough”, said Roger Ebert in 2005, in his review of Marco Tullio Giordana’s The Best of Youth. This was in response to virtually all of his peers opening their assessments of the film – originally planned as a television miniseries – with the mention that it’s six hours long, as though the running time were an indicator of quality (or lack thereof).
It's an annoying habit that persists to this day, usually when it comes to arthouse movies: anyone who’s attended the major festivals in the last ten years or so is bound to have at least heard of the Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz, widely known – and, in some circles, mocked – for making fairly long films.
When he won the Golden Leopard in Locarno in 2014, multiple articles identified him solely as the director of “a five-and-a-half-hour long film”, with barely a mention of why he may or may not have deserved the win – usually because the journalists in question hadn’t bothered watching the movie.
Similar attitudes were on display when Diaz competed in Venice in 2016 with The Woman Who Left, which caused many a critic to rush to the repeat screening when it won the Golden Lion. Said film was a mere 3 hours and 40 minutes – roughly the same as Gone with the Wind, which most of the same critics are likely to have watched in one sitting without complaining.
Even more amusing these days is when gripes about a film’s length come from viewers, who will complain about a film having the audacity to run longer than two hours, only to then binge whatever new Netflix or Amazon Prime show is out that weekend (and whine about Disney+ releasing its shows one episode at a time). The solution? Divide the movies into chapters, as someone did with The Irishman, providing a guide for when to take breaks (Zack Snyder’s Justice Leaguedoes actually have chapter breaks on screen, but they’re more of a stylistic addition).
Going back to Ebert’s quote, my most miserable moviegoing experience remains my viewing of The Emoji Movie, in the summer of 2017. Why? Because it felt like literally no one involved actually had any faith in the project, which had an accelerated production schedule so the jokes about smartphones and apps wouldn’t feel dated when the movie hit theaters (spoiler alert: mission very much not accomplished). It’s 86 minutes long, but it felt interminable. My cousin, who usually tags along for any movie I want to watch (with the exception of horror), responded thusly when I mentioned I was seeing it: “Not even if you pay me a million bucks.”
Conversely, I’ve happily sat through movies by Diaz, or Frederick Wiseman, or Cristi Puiu, because they make every minute count, and it never comes across as a chore (provided you’re in the right state of mind). Back in 2013, controversial French director Abdellatif Kechiche revealed his contract for Blue Is the Warmest Color included a clause stating the film had to be no longer than two hours. He showed the producers two cuts, one of which was the three-hour version released in theaters – the shorter edit felt longer, according to the screening feedback.
That being said, I do occasionally dread longer running times when I’m at a festival, as multiple long movies on the same day can be exhausting. This is especially true in Cannes, where one can occasionally spend the equivalent of the movie’s length queueing before being let in to see the film itself.
And what about you, dear readers? Where do you stand on this? Sound off in the comments, and spread the word if you know anyone who would enjoy this newsletter.