LIFE IS SHORT, SOME MOVIES TOO LONG
That’s when you realize what a boon to movie’s success is the craft of editing
Whenever a room full of film critics sits down to a screening, someone will invariably ask: “Does anyone know the running time?”
And someone will invariably know the answer. Critics like to know if they’re in for 84 minutes of entertainment (or lack thereof ) or two-and-a-half hours.
Did they drink enough coffee to stay awake? Did they drink too much? A colleague once showed up to 2005’s King Kong badly needing to pee. She decided she’d wait for the ape to show up before she ducked out. An hour in, she was still waiting.
I’ve decided my standard answer to the question will be: “20 minutes too long.”
I’m kidding. Sort of. When you watch cinematic tales for a living (or even as an ardent pastime) you become acquainted with the craft of editing, and what a boon it can be to successful, succinct storytelling. Filmmaker Hal Roach Sr. is thought to have coined the phrase “cut to the chase” back in the silent era, when a car chase would function as a film’s climax. The more things change ... The running-time rule of thumb is that comedies are 90 minutes, dramas two hours and Oscar-winners however long they please. Since 2000, the average best picture has been 131 minutes. The shortest in that time was 2011’s The Artist, at 100. The shortest ever, 1955’s Marty, a trim 90.
There are exceptions. One of the most talked-about films at the Toronto International Film Festival this year was Toni Erdmann, a two-hour-and-42-minute German comedy. It’s hilarious, and worth every minute.
Says the film’s writer/director, Maren Ade: “I really tried to shorten it, but in a way I found it felt longer when it was shorter.” For the comedy to work, she says, you need time for the characters to find their discomfort level.
The movie’s signature scene comes at about the two-hour mark, when the central character, an uptight businesswoman (Sandra Hüller), belts out an old Whitney Houston song from beginning to end — verses, bridge, chorus and all. But before she does, there’s a scene of people painting Easter eggs.
“And you’re like, why are they painting eggs now?” says Ade. “But if we took them out, the singing didn’t work so well anymore. So it was really a balance that I found.” Comedy, like an egg, needs time to cook.
Compare Ade’s lengthy comic masterpiece with Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey. The impressionistic expedition hop-skips from the birth of the universe, through the evolution of life and into our Holocene present — in 90 minutes flat. An even shorter cut, Voyage of Time: The Imax Experience, does it in 45.
I was astonished, then, to read a review in IndieWire that called the movie “too damn long.” Collider said it “will certainly test your patience.” And while some reviewers have been enraptured, this one (who dearly wanted to love it) found the images repetitive — I’ve seen them before, in earlier Malick, Kubrick’s 2001 and Imax nature docs.
Meanwhile, Cate Blanchett’s breathy narration sounded like a cross between a prayer composed on the fly and a drunken weddingday speech. “Mother, does your goodness never fail?” “Time goes back to her source.” And what the heck is an “abyss of light”?
The critic Geoff Pevere once suggested that films should be rated, not out of four stars or five, but as a ratio of first-glance-atwatch to total running time. The resulting fraction, while resembling a blood-pressure reading, would indicate the degree of viewer investment in the tale, regardless of its length.
The best film I saw at TIFF this year was Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, a science-fiction story about first contact with aliens, and the attempts of a linguist (Amy Adams) to communicate with them. It’s a tale heady with heavy ideas, not only the impossibility of ever truly understanding another mind, but the cruelty of time’s arrow, which delineates the future even as it slices through our mortal hearts.
As I staggered from the screening, nearly in tears, I was struck with an odd thought: What would I do if I found out my child were going to die? It’s a paradoxical question, because I already know. We all do. Life dies. To quote a line from Philip Roth in American Pastoral (another powerful film at the festival this year): “Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.”
Mortal axioms are so simple they sound trite, even when whispered in your ear by Blanchett in Dolby.
The genius of a film like Arrival is the way it wraps the message in an original skin. In this case, it’s a short science-fiction story by Ted Chiang, from which the film was adapted.
It certainly held my attention. If American Pastoral scores 105/126 (two-hour-and-six-minute running time; watch check at an hour and 45), and Voyage of Time a disappointing 25/90, then Toni Erdmann gets a near-perfect 155/162.
But Villeneuve’s picture does it one better: 120/116. Not only did I not think of checking my watch during Arrival, but when the final credits rolled, I still wasn’t ready for its cinematic life to end.