The verdict I gave when the lights came up was, “I fell asleep three different times”. My friend laughed a little – arrogantly so – having predicted that I’d find Lincoln boring when we bought the tickets. In fact, it was palatable enough for as biopic. But at 150 minutes it was just too long. And I’ve had a gutful.
Sure, I have an overarching objection to sitting still for longer than 90 minutes: I get fidgety, disruptive, and am hard-pressed resisting the gravitational pull of my phone.
But my true objection centres not on the achy coccyx or restless legs. I simply do not understand why a story can’t be told in 90 minutes.
From high school through to my undergraduate years, every single assignment I ever wrote was ridiculously over the word length. No matter the topic, no matter my interest level, I’d research like a maniac and think that the only way to show how much work I’d done was to write copiously.
I had all kinds of elaborate techniques to “hide” words: narrowed margins, smaller fonts, my beloved kerning. Once I started tutoring as a PhD student however – once I was tasked with marking essays – I realised how immature and farcical it all was. And I promptly learnt my lesson.
I suspect that my naive belief that quantity was the best way to crow about my labours is akin to the rationale of Hollywood’s Long Film Syndrome.
An unnamed director recently described Django Unchained as Quentin Tarantino “masturbating for three hours”. Harsh. But I too would question the levels of self-indulgence of a director taking three hours to tell a story. Any story.
I had been on a sketchy mission to see all the Oscar nominees before the ceremony. I couldn’t however, bring myself to see Django, and the thought of sitting through Les Miserables made by arse ache. 165 and 158 minutes respectively.
Comedian Rita Rudner – discussing her friend’s long labour – commented, “I don’t even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours”. And I often think of this line when a film approaches the two-hour mark. My aversion to sitting still of course, is on its own insufficient grounds to protest film length. Instead, let us turn to the economists.
I might have exited that undegrad microeconomics class with a pitiful mark of 66%, but I did pick up a couple of handy terms. One is the law of diminishing marginal utility.
Or, as I like to paraphrase it: the first chocolate in the box tastes best, each subsequent bite tastes a little less good until you eat so many you’re ill.
And film is the same. The film might be good – the film might even be great – but it’s not getting any better the longer it drags out; in fact, the sitting, and the restlessness and the needing to go pee pee all likely detract from the enjoyment.
I have actually seen a few of the films on the three-hour plus list. I really liked Deer Hunter, for example, but I’m pretty sure I’d have loved it had it not ran for 185 minutes. Ditto Schindler’s List (195 minutes) and Magnolia (188 minutes). And at a ridiculous 317 minutes, 1900 was way too much effort for one scene of Stefania Casini giving simultaneous hand jobs to two men. (Even if those men were Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu).
Hollywood – a size-queen if ever there was one – has gotten herself into a cycle of thinking of thinking longer is better, longer is serious and longer means epic. To me, I just want to know where the bloody editors are when you need ‘em.
Philip Dowling
IT teacher
This article says a lot about the author's attention span. No doubt she would have cut the songs out of The Sound of Music. Would she prefer a sixty minute man or somebody with premature ejaculation issues?
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
I'll concede, I absolutely do have a limited attention span. (Something I think TV has likely "helped" with - a topic for a different article though).
I loved Sound of Music. Were there bits that could have been cut? Unquestionably. Are there bits that could be cut in most films/books/articles? Yes, I think so.
Sex however, is a completely different story. A friend and I were having this very discussion last night in fact - there are indeed, arguments for both arrangements. Again, probably a different article though.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
There is nothing that cannot be said in 140 characters. Everything else is just padding.
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
Peter! What a troll you are ;)
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
Ta M8t..... (NB mandatory extra letters) :)
Mat Hardy
Lecturer in Middle East Studies at Deakin University
Spielberg has always confused length with weight and art. It's no surprise that Lincoln followed suit.
Kim Darcy
Analyst
Mat, 'weight and art' are not necessarily antithetical. It depends on the art form and genre. The most artistically superior poetry tends to be epic poetry, rather than say, ditties. Even in pop music, "extended mixes" work better in some genres than others. Cinema probably has more restrictions on just how much 'weight' can succeed, due to the peculiar circumstances - physical confinement - involved in experiencing that art form. I think Spielberg operates at probably the 'weight' limit the art form can bear, but he does not go too far.
Mat Hardy
Lecturer in Middle East Studies at Deakin University
Longer poems are better? That kills off the whole sonnet thing then.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
No one has the time for a whole sonnet Mat ... isn't there an executive summary somewhere?
Kim Darcy
Analyst
Not all long poems are 'epics'. Not all long poems are 'weighty'. No epic poem is short. An epic-length sonnet would quickly become vacuous, rather than 'weighty'.
Dennis Alexander
logged in via LinkedIn
Kim, I think Mat said Spielberg confused length with weight and art. Length on its own is no guarantee of either, but neither do weight and art automatically preclude length. And a sonnet is 14 lines, full stop, no more: an epic sonnet is, in poetical terms, an oxymoron. Peter, want an executive summary, the final sextrain usually does the job. TropFest shows Lauren's point admirably.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
Dennis agree completely re the oxymoron ... bit rough on oxen really - just moronic would do.
But I do like the implicit notion of just knocking off the warm-up section of yer sonnets and cutting to the chase with the last half dozen lines.
Poetry doesn't do well in this tabloid tweeting era ... could all do with a blue pencil ... even haiku no?
John Alsop
Flaneur
Where can one board this sextrain?
alfred venison
records manager (public sector)
when people first started texting on mobile phones late last century i recall some wag in england translated the entire illiad from "the greek" into "the txt". now that i'd like to have a read of it i can't find the thing anywhere. -a.v.
Dale Bloom
Analyst
There could be something in the law of diminishing marginal utility.
So many people wanted a female Prime Minister, and now we have one, most people can’t wait until the next election.
BTW. Are there any Australian films being made, or anything Australian at all.
Seamus Gardiner
Citizen
I've noticed some interesting effects now that I've become addicted to high quality cable TV series. One is that I now find most cinema pieces vapid, irrespective of their length. Another is that I find long movies execrable (the hobbit a recent example... not a bad movie, but did we really need another misty shot of an imperious looking Cate Blanchett in funny prosthetic ears or another slavering wolf chase).
The final effect is that when you do see a director shoehorn a fine tale with great dialogue into an hour and a half with great performances and great cinematography you finally realise how great cinema can be. Making the viewer work for the story and fill in the gaps themselves is the secret, I suspect. It's a bit like the difference between a short story and a novel.
When cinema gets it right it makes you want more with the realisation that less can be more.
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
I really agree with you about the impact of good quality TV. I've half-written a piece in my head on this topic after seeing The Sweeney and wondering why do some filmmakers bother with projects that television can tackle that much better?
If a film really has two or so hours of material in it, why just not make a TV series?
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
"If a film really has two or so hours of material in it, why just not make a TV series?"
What? And stretch two hours of material over six. Isn't that exactly the kind of thing you are arguing against?
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
Not quite. I meant that if there really is that much material in the film - if it really warrants a 2 hour + film - then quite possibly there is enough material in there for a TV series. But no, of course, I don't want a two hour idea padded into a 13-part series. That said, that's not the only option. I quite like, for example, the BBC take on Sherlock.
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
" if it really warrants a 2 hour + film - then"
There is no "then".
If it "warrants" a two hour film, and someone wants to make a two hour film than that is that. The fact that some people don't want to watch it beacuse it is two hours long is completely irrelevant.
"I quite like, for example, the BBC take on Sherlock."
From what I can see, that seems to fit nicely with the fact that you have a sizeable amount of allready episodic content that is character driven.
However, there seems…
Read moreLauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
Agreed that movies shouldn't be more like TV. My point - and it's a simple one - is that I just don't think a film should be long simply for the sake of it and I think a lot of films do that: that they are long because long has come to mean good/artistic/epic.
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
"... I just don't think a film should be long simply for the sake of it."
Of course not.
And it shouldn't be short simply for the sake of it.
"a lot of films do that: that they are long because long has come to mean good/artistic/epic."
Agree. But again, I don't see this as an argument gainst longer films. Just an argument against bad films.
Kim Darcy
Analyst
Lauren, I think over the past decade or two, TV has emerged as the top visual and performing art form. And the top TV works are American.Cinema does not rise to "The Wire" or even "Boston Legal". I remember growing up as a kid thinking American TV was absolute vulgar trash, and that Americans were immune to irony. It was British BBC TV that ruled. That all changed and very quickly. Nowadays, I consider British TV - indeed, practically all British art - to be infantile, with the possible exception of period dramas, particularly the 'bonnets and corsets' shows.
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
Agreed. I need to finish the article that's half-written in my head about this, but once upon a time there was such stigma about television acting, whereas now big name Hollywood movie stars readily appear in TV series because an artform legitimacy that has emerged: TV is no longer film's dodgy cousin.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
"Beige hell"... just lovely.
You listening Tolstoy?
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
If you are making the argument for quality over quantity, then the introdcution of any kind of ideal length is inappropriate. Not quite as innapropriate as introducing ecomomic argument.s Not everything reduces to economics, a fact that most economists seem to even realise.
I like the piece of folk wisdom: The job takes as long as it takes.
Certainly, an extra 30 minutes is not neccesarily going to make a bad, good, or indifferent film a better film. But it doesn't follow that any long film…
Read moreLauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
I do, of course, agree with you: you can't set a maximum length. But I'd also say that in my experience, there is so much fat in so many films - and I really don't think it adds anything at all to the viewing experience, even if it can be justified on artistic grounds.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
These creative types always try and justify all sorts of verbose padding on "artistic grounds"... look at your Tolstoy and your Joyce... It was one piddling day Jim - thank god you didn't do a week!
Sean Manning
Physicist
2001 is the greatest film of all time.
Seamus Gardiner
Citizen
well I reckon you can set a maximum length. One of the least fondest memories of my youth is being forced to sit through 'Gone With the Wind'. 4 hours. Let me say that again.... 4 hours.
It takes less time to read 'Catcher in the Rye'.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
Seamus ... long movies don't bore people - people bore people.
I have an iron-clad rule ... I only watch the first 47 minutes of anything and then get up and walk out ...watching responsibly. Know when you've had enough.
Kim Darcy
Analyst
Cinema comes up against a time restriction due to the way we 'consume'/experience it; sitting in a large darkened room with hundreds of strangers, and all the attending social restrictions - no talking, loud eating, pausing, etc. Each of us will have our own patience threshold. I'd be surprised if a large % of cinema-goers are unfazed by films over three hours long.
alfred venison
records manager (public sector)
i re-read "Ulysses" two weeks ago - the first 3 chapters - with as much unalloyed pleasure as the last time twenty years ago. prose style as crisp & succinct as ever. thank you, james joyce, thank you, nora barnacle, for this gift that keeps on giving! -a.v.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
Oh yes Alfred art, beauty, poetry, words that flow like torrents - yeah whatever ... but it's just so long, so much of it ... takes so much of our oh so precious time ... time that could be spent tweeting and keeping up with the Kardashians, or following the latest CNN feed on Geoge Clooney's sexual exploits.
See with a decent bit of art like your Mona Lisa or a Sistine Chapel you can just google it up, have a scroot, download it onto your iphone and you've got the thing for keeps. But with them books and poems and fillums you have to do the whole business .. just sitting there... all that time ticking away ... time you'll never get back. Time with the phone switched off. It's sensory deprivation Alfred. Just brutal.
That's the trouble isn't it with this art and culture business - it hauls us away from the everyday ... this wonderful everyday ...
alfred venison
records manager (public sector)
sensory deprivation, Peter? i re-read (aloud) t.s. eliot 'round xmas time. got through "prufrock", "the wasteland", "the hollow men" (first time) & "the four quartets" in one night. no internet - six hours of john cage from the computer for background: ideal. went to bed very late, drank a lot of coffee, but got all that in one sitting. now, eliot, there's compression, concision, succinctness. and news that stays news. -a.v.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
Wrote 'em with a scalpel Alfred ... surgical precision... one of my favorites. I've got him on an app.... ragged clause.
alfred venison
records manager (public sector)
chiselled, they might have said at time, Peter, like a gaudier-brzeska sculpture. -a.v.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
That sounds like what I'd call a great night in myself Alfred - reading poems aloud - as they should always be read I reckon ... ALWAYS... so you get the music and the pulse ... do you have an audience?
I only get the ear of the dogs. They particularly like Ginsberg's Howl...figgers I guess. But gee it's a hard tongue-twister of a read out loud. The chooks are total philistines ... tweeting and texting away...
alfred venison
records manager (public sector)
always aloud, like you say, for the music, otherwise just read prose. i intone to an audience of myself, Peter. howl is a great read, a tour de force for the tongue, the dogs show discernment. -a.v.
Mark Amey
logged in via Facebook
Gone with the bloody wind was three hours too long.
alfred venison
records manager (public sector)
yeah "gone with the wind" was too long from the start but i'd argue "inglourious basterds" was about an hour too short. -a.v.
John Newton
Author Journalist
Lauren - I saw Django and Lincoln one after the other and described Lincoln as worthy but wordy and way too long but so entertaining was Django I didn't even notice its length.
For me it's the same with books. Some drag through 150 pages, some, after page 300, I don't want to end.
I don't think there are any rules.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
The Gettysburg address - all 246 words of it. Imagine how much more memorable it would have been if he'd given it a decent edit and just tweeted it.
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
Agreed - of course there shouldn't be rules. But this idea that a longer film is somehow a more worthy film - and in turn, that 90 minute films are somehow inferior - is idiotic.
That all said, there are very few 2.5 hour plus films I've loved. But I've loved an awful lot of really long books.
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
"But this idea that a longer film is somehow a more worthy film - and in turn, that 90 minute films are somehow inferior - is idiotic."
- And the converse - "I simply do not understand why a story can’t be told in 90 minutes" - is equally idiotic.
Seamus Gardiner
Citizen
Not really, geoffrey.
Read moreThe movie is of a particular form. It is designed to be viewed in one sitting. It has marketed and designed around a night out. This does not detract from the artiness of it, after all dickens wrote serialised novels under similar constraints to his art.
To say that you can't place restrictions on movie length or that they are arbitrary is quite wrong. We call a motion picture of 30 minutes a 'short' not a 'movie'. A movie of 6 hours long is not digestable in a sitting…
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
Agreed - there shouldn't be rules. And I've lost myself in long films too: I really did love Magnolia for example. But a long film has to be so so so much better than a 90 minute film for me to enjoy it because after an hour and a half of sitting I really need something sustantially fabulous to keep interested.
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
I have deliberately not watched 2001 because I know there isn't enough in there that would
But of coruse, attention spans and what's considered boring and artistic are completely fickle. My brother and his partner watched "Hot Tub Time Machine" over three sittings. Three! At most it's, what, a 90 minute film?
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
"To say that you can't place restrictions on movie length or that they are arbitrary is quite wrong."
I didn't say you can't, I argue that you shouldn't.
"This does not detract from the artiness of it"
- I am not even talking about "art film." The movie Heat, cops and robbers, De Niro and Pacino. 170 minutes or some such. Absorbing Film, had no problems watching it several times.
Scorcese's Casino (1995) 178 minutes - eyes rivted the whole time. Scarface (1983) - 170 minutes same again.
"A movie of 6 hours long... A movie of 10 hours long... "
But we aren't talking about anything even close to those figures so this is somewhat of a strawman
"maybe I'm unique in my inability to concentrate totally on fine art for 3 hours"
Probably not. And you are from unique in your sarcasm.
Kim Darcy
Analyst
Geoffrey, I think Lauren's whole posting style is very, very candid that she is sharing her own, personal tastes and responses to culture. At least the way I read her, she is pretty opposed to any notion of a reductionist aesthetics. One of the refreshing qualities of her articles is that they do not conform to the common Cultural Studies assessments, which repeat over and over re-heated ideology from the tired old Frankfurt School (putting lipstick on a pig in my view) that all popular culture must first and foremostly be exposed (or lauded) for its complicity (or subversion) with the interests of 'power'.
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
And here I was thinking Frankfurt School was about putting pigs through a meat grinder.
Kim Darcy
Analyst
Indeed, the sausage machine for producing the subversive radical revolutionary vanguard primed to rescue the consciousness-bereft proletarian swill, lolling about in their sties of page 3 girls, football hooliganism, and Howard-voting xenophobia.
Seamus Gardiner
Citizen
Hardly strawman, merely stating thatat some point of length a movie ceases to become so. And at some length a movie will become unwatchable in one sitting.
In any event, I think Lauren's diatribe was also concerning 'empty minutes' as was my point in 'the Hobbit' reference. If a scene does not value add, can be more succinctly told or can be left for the audience to work out... well that is the art of great movie making.
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
"If a scene does not value add, can be more succinctly told or can be left for the audience to work out... well that is the art of great movie making."
I agree. But that still doesn't tell you how long a movie should be, just those things which it need not include. We can point to obvious examples of films which could have been much better by the applicatin of some judicious editing. But we can also point to films which, although long, don't suffer the failings you mention.
To adapt a quote from the sciences: "A film should be as short as possible, but no shorter."
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
I think you're probably taking my article - and style - to a place of seriousness that I don't think is warranted. While it's lovely that you're engaged, clearly - from the first-person narrative style I employ - I, personally, just prefer films that don't go for two hours; that I - personally - don't think a film gets better because it's longer. That's it. I'm not making policy recommendations: that is most certainly not my approach.
Cheers!
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
Good lord, I can't imagine how much I'd need to be paid to go and see any of the Hobbit films...
Geoffrey Edwards
logged in via email @gmail.com
"While it's lovely that you're engaged"
Aww shucks, I am glad you think it's lovely.
Cheeeeeers!
Seamus Gardiner
Citizen
Lauren,
I don't know, I can't explain it, all I know is that I shuffle into every new peter jackson atrocity, clutching my ticket and my doona (tried sitting for a 472 hour movie in an over-refridgerated cinema?) vainly hoping for a cinematic epiphany only to trudge out blinking into the light and, like some hairy,middle aged newborn, squalling in outrage.
John Alsop
Flaneur
So that was you? I was going to call Security.
You are right, of course. Sad because an early PJ film like Heavenly Creatures was good. And now we get these lumbering, vapid epics.
I wouldn't mind knowing his slimming secrets, however. I could use them.
John Newton
Author Journalist
LOL Peter, LOL - and this has to be ten characters so - LOL again
Chris Booker
Research scientist
Bring back the intermission!
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
And I think people's nostalgia for the intermission is why DVD sales/downloads are so high: folks want to be able to press pause and stretch their legs and not sit in the filth of someone's popcorn remnants.
Personally I much prefer the cinema.
John Alsop
Flaneur
It was Hitchcock who wisely said that the running time of a movie needed to take into account the endurance of the human bladder. What he didn't foresee was a time where cinema patrons would routinely drink a sizeable bucket of cola drink and feel the need to go out of the auditorium three times to deal with its diuretic consequence. And then return with another bucket. With so little comprehension of the cause and effect, it's a miracle they can follow a film of any length.
For a long time…
Read moreLauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
Which is just shonky economics. I don't exit a cinema thinking I've gotten more "value" just because the film runs for 110 minutes or more. This idea of "money's worth" being connected to time is insane.
In fact , I'd actually much rather the filmmaker do me the service of letting me leave promptly. Besides, I certainly put a higher price than what... $18 for a 2 hour film... so $9 an hour on my time.
John Alsop
Flaneur
Agreed. There was a marvellous cartoon in a recent New Yorker which depicted a woman at the box-office counter in the company of a resnetful partner, asking: "Is there a discount for someone who doesn't want to see the movie?"
James Hodgkinson
logged in via Facebook
Ugh, speaking of masturbation, this is a writer given useful space on what is supposed to be an intellectually driven site, prattling on about how short her attention span is.
Russell Hamilton
Librarian
Lincoln was only my second trip to the cinema in the last 10 years (Mrs Carey' Concert being the other). Neither do I have a DVD, and am a bit unfamiliar with films of the last, umn, 30 years. (But I loved "1900").
So, friends invited me to see Lincoln and we went on a hot, 35c, afternoon. Luckily I remembered to take a cardigan. They were in teeshirts and froze. Why has it always been so? The film is going to seem a lot longer if you're freezing, or is this just W.A. cinemas?
"1900" was visually fantastic, whereas the director of Lincoln apparently just wanted to fit as many words in the time as possible. So it not may be the length, but the balance of words, visuals, plot etc. I reckon I could greatly improve "Crime and Punishment" by editing out about 25% of the novel.
Surely the best film ever made was Fellini's Armacord?
Lauren Rosewarne
Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne
Actually, hot days are an exception. I saw Titanic in - I think early 1998 - on a day close to 40 degrees and the length of it was most certainly buffered by the free air-conditioning ;)
Dale Bloom
Analyst
I suppose 40 degrees means dashing off to an air-conditioned cinema, to watch some plastic American actor battle against all adversity, and then emerge as a true hero, and receive an Oscar nomination.
But what happens if the air-conditioner fails.
Does the movie automatically turn off also.
Gordon Anderson
Professor of Law
You should have gone to Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer which was a much better movie. However for dragging out a minor tale to several lots of three hours of sub-standard rubbish and special effects that are meant to compensate you can't go past New Zealand "hero" and union basher Peter Jackson.
Merrilyn Shackelford
Ophthalmic nurse at Ophthalmology
.....sometimes "less is more"...
alfred venison
records manager (public sector)
i was not aware of time passing, i was riveted to it every minute, my hands were sweating. how long was it? doesn't matter. i don't understand you guys, but at least you're consistent - opinion here was markedly against "madmen" (which i also admire for is historical verisimilitude, quality script & brilliant acting) when it was discussed here last year. for me "lincoln" is far and away the best movie of the year & the best movie i've seen this century. honestly, it craps all over "argo", for…
Read moreRussell Hamilton
Librarian
alf - weren't you snapped out of your fascination when Gidget appeared?
alfred venison
records manager (public sector)
what, swathed in 19th century petticoats? not likely. i saw mrs lincoln, the illusion was complete. -a.v.