The Movie Barbarian
Two Richards, Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss, movie critics of Time Magazine, recently came up with the list of the 100 Greatest Movies of all Time. Browsing through the list, I was feeling rather uneasy since majority of the listed titles sounded alien to me. Although I haven’t actually watched some films that made the list like Casablanca (1942) and Citizen Cane (1941), these films were familiar since I’ve seen stills and clips of the movies at one point. Feeling dejected over my seeming ‘movie barbarian’ status, I resorted to counting the films that first screened at around the time that I was already alive and kicking. Surprisingly, twenty-six films in all were included in this list, and these are:
-
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)
- Mon ocle d’Amérique (1980)
- Raging Bull (1980)
- Blade Runner (1982)
- E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
-
Brazil (1985)
- The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
- The Singing Detective (1986)
- Nayakan (1987)
- Wings of Desire (1987)
- The Decalogue (1989)
- Goodfellas (1990)
- Miller’s Crossing (1990)
- Leolo (1992)
- Unforgiven (1992)
- Farewell My Concubine (1993)
- Schindler’s List (1993)
-
Chungking
Express (1994)
- Drunken Master II (1994)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
-
Kandahar (2001)
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003)
- City of God(2002)
- Talk To Her (2002)
- Finding Nemo (2003)
In my opinion, the 100 Greatest Movie list of Time is a balanced representation of the best movies through time. It is quite neat that twenty-six movies since the year that I was born in (1979) made it to the countdown. That means for every year that I polluted this Earth with my existence, a good movie came along and earned a slot in the greatest movie list. It also felt vindicating that I’ve managed to watch a third or twelve of these films to date (in bold face and underlined). Technically, it’s a total of fourteen if each of the installments of the LOTR were counted. However I’m still pretty sore about the fact that no film from 1979 made it to the list. It’s somehow disconcerting to be born in year that reeks with cinematic mediocrity. And the feeling gets worse when you realize that three films from 1980 made it to the list.
On a good note, I was especially glad that E.T. made it to the list. As far as I could remember, E.T. was the first movie that I ever watched in a cinema. I was in Nursery school back then with my mom and older brother. Like most kids, I dozed off before the movie could wrap up. E.T. the alien didn’t probably catch my fancy back then, and probably, I had gobbled up all the snacks and decided to devote my blood supply for digestion.
Greatest movie listings, or any ‘greatest listing’ of any kind for that matter, are sure to spark debate and controversy. But as the Two Richards from Time contend, such lists make for good conversation topics, and could even pave the way for a good dose of intellectual discussion. In the meantime, I’ll try to search for the other movies I haven’t seen yet. With the advent of accessible and affordable digital technology (read: pirated DVD discs and the like), I guess it’s never too late to acquaint myself with classical film culture and break out of my barbarian shell.
