Awards and Indulgence
Industry recognition ≠ Real recognition
Last week, thinking-person’s film magazine Sight and Sound released it’s updated list of the best films ever made.
Critics and experts from across the world are polled on their top-10 list once a decade, with the aim of producing as close to a definitive answer as possible to the age-old question of the ‘what’s the greatest film ever?”
This time, they chose as their winner ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’, written and directed by Chantal Akerman. Sight and Sound call it a “supreme cinematic achievement” and - at just under 3 and a half hours long – reflective of “a wider acceptance of slow cinema”.
Seen it? No, me neither.
Going to bother to hunt it out and give it 3 and a half hours of your time? No, me neither.
Firstly, because the best film ever made is Die Hard and no panel of nerds is ever going to convince me otherwise.
Secondly, because I have other things to do. There’s too much else going on in life to curate the media that plays in the background of it. Regardless of artistic merit, hundreds of thousands more people will watch Police Interceptors on Channel 5 this evening than have ever watched Jeanne Dielman.
Anyway, excuse the digression.
I also saw that Campaign released their list of the best film ads made this year last week.
Top of the list was the lovely Christmas ad from the National Lottery, which also topped System 1’s table of Christmas ads this year.
It’s a belter, evocative of Richard Curtis’ best work without the uncomfortable sexist overtones, packed with joy, drama, tension and Christmas magic. You can’t help getting all the Christmas feels.
It’s also three and a half minutes long.
So it’s not an advert.
It’s a lovely film, but it can’t fit into a buyable slot for paid-for advertising.
There’s a 30 second edit, of course, but it’s not as good. Because if it was as good there wouldn’t be a version seven times longer.
I’m sure the short version is delivering results for The National Lottery, so let’s judge that one, the one designed to sell stuff, rather than it’s self-indulgent longer sibling.
At the time of writing the full version has notched up 60,000 views on YouTube, of which I’d guess at least half are from people in our industry. I’d estimate it has sold zero lottery tickets.
I’ll argue the case for the value of creativity in delivering brilliant campaign performance until I’m blue in the face. The best work I’ve been involved in has generally been creative-led, or a brilliant interplay between creative and media (the work we should really be rewarding as an industry, in my opinion). I believe in the power of a good ad.
But I will never understand the point of these sorts of films.
Lots of people far cleverer than I are involved in making them, and I’m wary that I’m just totally missing something of real value to the advertiser that they provide, but I just can’t see it.
I finish every post by asking for your thoughts, in this case I really mean it. Is this a blindspot of mine/the media industry’s? Or are these films just a massive indulgence in pursuit of industry recognition?
If it’s the latter, we really need to think more about the work we choose to recognise.
Greg