Movies and Lists

Almost since the opening of The Dark Knight (or the Dark Kitty, as I like to call it), there has been a small to-do raging in various sections and substrata of the internets. This ruckus centers on this list, the Top 250 Films on the Internet Movie Database, the compilation of hundreds of thousands of users’ ratings of movies.

The crux of the issue is that, shortly after its release, The Dark Knight has rocketed to #1 on that list, upsetting the longstanding favourites such as The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, Casablanca, not to mention 247 other films. Battles of wit and will have raged on message boards, attacking and defending the idea that this newcomer, a comic book movie no less, deserves a place among these classics. Indeed, this sparked further wars, people ranking The Dark Knight a 1 out of 10, just to lower its rating. And now it seems as though Shawshank fans and Godfather fans are duking it out, with Shawshaking recently overtaking the Godfather.

In brief, it’s utter insanity, inanity, the best, the worst, and everything you could possibly hope for from the internets.

But it does bring up some interesting points. What it means to be a good movie, what rankings like this actually mean, flaws in the system and … stuff.

It’s hard to know where to begin. The fundamental flaw in all this, I believe, can be found in the very name of the list in question. The ‘Top’ 250 Movies. This is not the list of the ‘best’ movies, a catalog of great performances, beloved classics, or anything else you care to name. It is a rather amorphous ‘top’. Does The Dark Knight deserve a place on it? It is certainly groundbreaking among movies of its kind. It does have good performances, most notably by Heath Ledger as the Joker. In what may be my most thurough review of the movie I will give, I will say that much of the movie, if not all, is practically forgettable next to Ledger’s Joker. But, having seen it twice, it is a flawed movie. The camera work is, in many instances, irritating at best. The script and dialog at times leave something to be desired. I cannot take seriously any conversation that makes serious use of the phrases ’silent guardian’ or ‘watchful protector’. That may be a personal issue, but weaknesses are certainly there.

But in many ways, The Dark Knight is one of the biggest movies in recent history. The box office results alone make it notable, having shattered numerous records. The public response has been enormous as well. This is no doubt due to many things, certainly including Batman fanboyism/insanity and interest in Heath Ledger’s untimely death. But all this has added up to make The Dark Knight a blockbuster of blockbusters, and in my mind certainly earning it no small amount credit. It deserves to be on a list. But which list, and where?

The problem is that The Godfather and The Dark Knight are both on the list for good reasons – but not the same reasons. Looking through the top movies, we have a wide array of films, from Citizen Kane and Star Wars, to Psycho, No Country for Old Men, and Wall-E. All of these are great and important movies, but all for different reasons. Citizen Kane pioneered all kinds of camera and directing techniques. Star Wars was well ahead of its time in terms of effects, and for the time was a fascinating new take on the traditional hero myth. The Matrix of the 1970’s. Psycho was shocking in a way rarely, if ever attempted at the time. And then you have the classics, pinnacles of the art, such as the Godfather, Rushamon, and … what have you. All significant and important movies in these different ways and areas, but all are competing with each other in this amorphous ‘top’. Historically significant movies, culturally significant, movies that have advanced the way movies are viewed, made, thought of, movies that have pushed the boundaries of the medium itself, and just all time favourites. Mixing them all together is simply unfair. Comparisons that cannot and should not be made turning the list into a cheap popularity contest.

Ideally, the way to solve this problem would be to create multiple rankings and lists, into similar topics as I’ve described above, allowing people to rate the movie based on how it contributed to each area. Of course, an all time favourite catagory would no doubt devolve into more cheap popularity contests, but perhaps something of worth could be gained nonetheless. A movie might be 10/10 on groundbreakingness, for whatever reason, while having merely average elements in other areas. Of course, the danger in creating these separate catagories would be that a movie might come along that defies conventional classification, forging out a catagory all of its own. Putting everying into one giant pot does kind of avoid that, but what is lost?

The catagory I am the most interested in would have to be that of films that furthered how movies were made – what people had the capacity and will to show. At one point in time, showing toilets on screen was forbidden, and movies existed only as a vehicle for performance and events. But now movies are so much more. What are the movies that really brought us forward to where we are today? This would have to include such moves as Star Wars, any number of Hitchcock’s work, Rushamon, The Sting, Close Encounters of the Third Kind – these would be movies you can still find elements and qualities of in movies today, the foundations of modern cinema. It would include movies like Pan’s Labyrinth and No Country for Old Men, pushing the boundaries of what we expect and what we can imagine from movies in the future.

I started this post with a full head of steam, ready to break down every movie on the top 250 into why it is important, what makes it good and worth noting, but it is 2 in the morning and I am quite tired, so I will put it to you, my many, ready, and eager readers, what catagories do you imagine? What movies to fill them? What makes a movie important and worthy of note?

The ultimate flaw in any such system, and the one true contributing factor in flame wars and squabbles, is the fact that opinions differ, times and tastes change, and everyone likes to be right. But by breaking the ranking system down further into its constituent parts, it would focus the clashing of opinions into common, and therefore comparable, grounds.

I suppose the one final question that remains to be answered is, if the Godfather is truly the Top #1 Movie of All Time, will it always be, and how will we know when it isn’t? When the very last afficionado has died, who will mourn its passing?