Cinema’s greatest scene: ‘Casablanca’ and ‘La Marseillaise’ (2015)
seveninchesofyourtime.com
seveninchesofyourtime.com
What I don't think I ever realized is that the film is from 1942. Pretty much every WWII film is from long after the war ended, but this was released early in the France occupation. That adds so much to its meaning and power.
> Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,
> May by thy mighty aid,
> Victory bring.
> May he sedition hush,
> and like a torrent rush,
> Rebellious Scots to crush,
> God save the King.
So that's nice, when your own national anthem called for you to be crushed. This verse is not used anymore, but the UK national anthem is obviously not popular in Scotland. I have never learned the lyrics to it and haven't the faintest interest in doing so. For me it starts "God save our something Queen, bleeh bleh bleh bleeeeeeh bleh bleh, god save our queen..."
I know "Kde domov můj" more than I know that song.
https://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/pdf/ssb_lyrics.p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the_Queen#Historic_Ja...
Did you read this on Twitter or in The National?
It’s not calling for loyal Scots to be crushed, just rebellious ones!
Someone anticipated the Scottish independence referendum already a long time ago!
But in honesty, the anthem isn't technically prejudiced against the Scottish identity today, it's just sort of ... weird due to this history and some accumulated shit, and many of us just fucking don't like it, but can't really do anything about it.
Flower of Scotland is very slow and brings an odd vibe to sporting events. I prefer Loch Lomond and how it builds :D
edit - you got downvoted: you shouldn't have
La Marseillaise, if you boil it down to a single sentence, is basically "Fight on, Frenchmen... because we are utterly screwed if you don't."--almost all of the violence in the song is about the violence directed towards the French by the various coalitions arrayed against it at that time. (Also extremely notable for a national anthem of that period, it never specifically identifies an enemy--contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem.)
Yes, OTOH it seems to have a mere passive, defensive spirit: “a guardian of the river” – “the watch on the Rhine” – “protects the sacred border of the land” – “remain”,[1] written afraid of annexation:
“Repeated French efforts to annex the Left Bank of the Rhine began with the devastating wars of King Louis XIV. French forces carried out massive scorched earth campaigns in the German south-west. This policy was fully implemented during the Napoleonic Wars with the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806–1813. In the two centuries from the Thirty Years' War to the final defeat of Napoleon I, the German inhabitants of lands by the Rhine suffered from repeated French invasions.
The defeat and exile of Napoleon gave the Germans some respite, but during the Rhine Crisis of 1840, French prime minister Adolphe Thiers advanced the claim that the Upper and Middle Rhine River should serve as his country's "natural eastern border". The member states of the German Confederation feared that France was resuming her annexationist designs.”[2]
Maybe itʼs even meant as a signal of dishonesty that it is sung by soldiers whose army didnʼt watch at the Rhine but occupied France brutally? Anyway, I donʼt intend to praise the Wacht am Rhein, itʼs certainly not great poetry, rather a rattling and clattering from the dustbin of history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Wacht_am_Rhein#Lyrics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Wacht_am_Rhein#Origin
I’m not extremely deeply familiar with the history and consequences of the French Revolution, but I recall that it was the French who started the War of the First Coalition.
As an ironic aside, it looks like the fellow who commissioned La Marseillaise lost his head to the Reign of Terror.
> contrast that to the dueling German anthem in the film, which is a rather explicitly anti-French anthem
Die Wacht am Rhein? The lyrics on Wikipedia don’t mention the French at all so far as I can tell. They claim that ‘Frenchman’ is a literal translation of ‘Welscher,’ but I think the literal translation is ‘foreigner.’
> Son giunchi che piegano (Mercenary swords)
> le spade vendute (they're feeble reeds)
> già l'Aquila d'Austria (The Austrian eagle)
> le penne ha perdute. (Has already lost its plumes)
> Il sangue d'Italia, (The blood of Italy)
> il sangue Polacco, (and the Polish blood)
> bevé, col cosacco, (It drank, along with the Cossack)
> ma il cor le bruciò (But it burned its heart)
... this is actually reciprocated in the Polish anthem:
> Marsz, marsz, Dąbrowski, (March, march, Dąbrowski)
> Z ziemi włoskiej do Polski. (From the Italian land to Poland)
> Za twoim przewodem (Under your command)
> Złączym się z narodem. (We shall rejoin the nation)
Nobility was calling them impure (since not from noble blood), and they reversed it to something to be proud of (kind of).
Here's a translation from Wikipedia:
"Let an impure blood
Water our furrows!
What does this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiring kings want?
For whom have these vile chains
These irons, been long prepared? (repeated)
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What furious action it must arouse!
It is for us they dare plan
A return to the old slavery!
What! Foreign cohorts!
Would make the law in our homes!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
…(later)
Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare those sorry victims,
For regretfully arming against us (repeated)"
Okay so Frenchmen are magnaminous, valorous warriors. The enemy are the slaves of tyrants. And we're meant to believe the impure blood in a song written by a French revolutionary era freemason refers to the third estate? Seems unlikely to me.
Damn ! it looks like you're right. I fell for this fake interpretation that got spread for the last 10 years on the net, and even reached wikipedia...
Sorry about that.
edit : it's even worst than that, that alternate theory reached the ministry of education and the parlement, since 2006...
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/rouget-de-marseille/blog/130718/l...
Looks like we're having a lot of trouble with the original super barbaric lyrics :)))
But since nationalism was widespread and encouraged in that zeitgeist, and considering the context of a foreign invasion in which the lyrics were written, I am way more inclined to assume that the "impure blood" is that of the "ferocious soldiers" coming for the French.
This is a question that is sometimes very much discussed in France. Always in French : https://www.uneautremarseillaisepourlafrance.fr/blog/2015/12...
Sorry about that.
Did the nobility in any country use to consider the blood of the people they ruled "impure"? Lowborn, sure, but "impure"?
Well, when the Marseillaise was written, they were about to kill the king, forgo any reference to God and were watering fields with the blood of their enemies (and French soldiers), so it was appropriate, no?
They were at war with half of Europe though, and directly threatened by the Austrian army, amongst others.
Modern billionaires could probably do with some history lessons.
To be fair to old Louis though, he did learn from the English civil war: he read Hume’s History of England and was well aware of how Charles I got killed. He tried very hard not to be as inflexible. So instead he got killed for going with the wind and saying yes too often, to the wrong people. And trying to flee, which was really un-patriotic, completely sank the legitimacy of the constitutional monarchy, and opened the door for the radicals.
The then very recent constitutional monarchy fell in August.
The king trial began in November and even then, although death was requested by some, it was not an evidence yet.
Death was voted with a small majority in January.
(/s -- victim of its own success...)
This was long before German unification and the head-on rivalry it created.
* Isak's vision of his family picnicking at the end of Wild Strawberries (1957), where a man finds peace in his journey through the memories of his life
* Hidetora walking out his burning castle in Ran (1985) amid a battle amid his two eldest sons for supremacy, his plan to divide his kingdom among his three children having come to a disastrous end - a man realizing his children (and humanity in general) are more horrible than his naive dreams of unity could sustain.
* Two scenes in The Cranes Are Flying (1957): a montage of Veronika's beloved dying in battle (he falls as his soul seems to ascend bc the camera angle) while she goes about her life; Veronika finding out Boris is dead for sure at the train station, giving the flowers intended for Boris to the returning men and their families, and then she sees the cranes above Moscow - hope and renewal.
* In I am Cuba (1964): a martyred revolutionary, a student, is carried through Havana as the whole city stops what they're doing to honor him, solemnly, cigar-factory workers and all.
* In Andrei Rublev (1966), there's an extended sequence where a bellmaker's young son agrees to pour a bell for a local lord. You see the entire process of making the mould and pouring the metal. It has a town-fair atmosphere. But at the end, there's tremendous pressure on the young bellmaker to have the bell ring properly and have no cracks. And it does. The protagonist, the lapsed monk Andrei Rublev, regains his faith, seeing the result of the young bellmaker's hope. (I've shared this a few times on this website.)
* At the end of L'Ecclise (1962), the two lovers decide to meet the next day but they don't. Instead, we see thirty shots of the empty city - a devastating way to get to the heart of loneliness and lack of connection in modern life.
The two lovers never meet again after promising not only to see each other that day, but also every day thereafter.
For almost ten minutes, while we are waiting for Alain Delon and Monica Vitti to meet up, the camera points at small insignificant structures in the Roman suburbs, then at a balcony, water running on the ground, ants climbing a tree, leaves moved by the wind. A bus stops and one expects to see one of the two lovers appear, but it is only someone who looks like them.
It is a magical ending because it is not an ending, it is a fragment.
It reminded me of the ending of one of my favorite interviews. Donald Keene, the American-born Japanese scholar, was interviewed by David Pilling in the "Lunch with the FT" series. The interview closes off with a reflection by Pilling:
"Keene’s eyes are moist. He is staring past me or through me. The restaurant is still quite empty but Keene has flooded it with the memories of people, mostly long dead. He stands to leave and is helped up the narrow stairs to the city above. Down in the basement, I am left at the empty table. There is nothing, not even the wind in the pines."
As Antonioni, a director I recommend especially to Americans, who are culturally oriented toward appreciating stereotypical linear stories with unambiguous endings, said in an interview:
"What people ordinarily call the "dramatic line" doesn't interest me [...] Today stories are what they are, with neither a beginning nor an end necessarily, without key scenes, without a dramatic arc, without catharsis. They can be made up of tatters, of fragments, as unbalanced as the lives we lead."
I also cannot but recommend Antonioni's "La Notte" and its less ambiguous but still poignant ending. Do yourself a favor and watch it.
Of the three films in the trilogy, my favorite part is the letter-reading scene at the end of La Notte. A married woman reads a letter to her husband, who had been conspicuously philandering all night, and he asks who wrote it. She says "you". So sad, the fading of love as memory.
She tells Mastroianni of having had in her life a man, whom we saw at the beginning of the film to be at the end of his existence in a hospital bed, who loved her, wanted her, but she preferred a man, the novelist played by Mastroianni, who never paid much attention to her. It is the usual story--I loved you but you loved and preferred somebody who did not--but the stillness of the two in the grass field, the broken voice of Jeanne Moreau, and the "lost and guilty look" of Mastroianni, made it so incredibly moving.
Another brilliant scene in "La Notte" is when Mastroianni is leaving the hospital--his wife has already left because she cannot bear to see the man who was in love with her die--and he is caught by another patient, a woman who seems to have some mental problem, and the two kiss.
As someone who has sometimes found himself inexplicably lost in the tourbillon of events--why am I doing this? This makes no sense!-- the scene was able to describe what I felt and saw in those bizarre moments.
Stellar acting by doing of the best of that era.
- The final scene in La Haine is devastating.
- The final scene of Sweet Smell of Success for pure cynicism.
- Pretty much all of The Wages of Fear for suspense, but if I have to hold up some scenes: 1) the confrontation in the restaurant; 2) the platform scene; 3) the boulder scene; 4) the Blue Danube scene.
- The raw emotional impact of the final confrontation in Secrets & Lies.
The NYT has a series of "Anatomy of a Scene" videos. These are mostly not very notable scenes, but it's still interesting to see what goes into them:
No other scene in the history of movies has made me contemplate my life choices and the choices of others to that degree. I believe that is what Lucas was aiming for in the next film, but it really hit right there like a mallet to a rubber chicken launcher.
Thank you, I'll have to watch the other films you mentioned. :)
Miller's Army of Shadows (1969) was the the first time I saw on film how it might be to know you are about to die. I can only find an unsubtitled version: the German officer tells the French resistance protagonist that he has a chance if he runs and gets to the back wall before being shot by the machine guns- he'll live to be executed another day. At first he refuses but survival kicks in and he runs believing he will be shot in the back at any moment. I urge you to watch the film in entirety to experience the intensity of the scene, alone doesn't do it justice. The first time I saw this it was like it was in slow motion, after so much had already happened in the film.
That is the funeral scene with that long shot in a single take where the camera "floats" up, and that back in 1964. Impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjuLkJ4m-mc
Discussed here:
> an old lady crosses the screen holding a rake.
By itself it's simple, almost meaningless, yet in context...
I ran the Google Cinema Club for 10 years, and I held up the flag for films like this. I'd rather show a good movie with lousy attendance than a shit movie that everyone likes.
I'm embarrassed to admit we only showed Wild Strawberries out of all those (many other Kurosawa flicks, though). Ran was just too long for a movie that started at 7:00 pm, while people had a last shuttle to catch.
I work in the Google NYC office, and there's even a fairly large new screening area (floor 6). But I think office-based clubs and such are practically dead because of remote work. Maybe they'll come back.
I have to admit I've never even heard of those two flicks.
No such Janet Traub at Google at the present. :)
Every time I am working on something complex I ask myself: will it "ring" in the end?
One of the best takes ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjuLkJ4m-mc
In Casablanca, there are no unnecessary scenes: every single scene has one or more uses in terms of plot. As they say here, Yvonne's a background character found in three small scenes and when we see her in her third and final scene, joining in 'La Marseillaise' it's like a gut punch so hard that it takes my breath away -- every time I see it.
This is what you can do with storytelling. These are the heights we can reach.
Absolutely OT, but you made me remember an old (very funny) spot for Canal+ (circa 2009/2010):
"Never underestimate the power of a great story"
JFYI:
After watching your link, it auto-played into the next one for me which was just as entertaining:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNd_hUqEEl4
My only previous experience with Canal+ was engineering digital US content workflows for their platform. I never got to see any of their local stuff like this.
... when they pass their eggs to each other ...
Brilliant
The French are singing this nice liberation / freedom song against the germans. This is nice and all, but they are in freaking occupied Morocco, not France! They continued to occupy it even after the war.
The people that made the movie didn't care about this irony because they didn't consider moroccans to be equal to the french. I get that. What I'm surprised is that people nowadays don't find this scene ridiculous (or at least very ironic). Coming from a colonized country (and being one of those people that weren't considered worthy of having their own country back then), I can't like that scene.
I would argue that the colonisation of Morocco by France was a net positive event and jump-started them out of the middle ages into an industrialised society.
I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion for this statement, I would like to express it nevertheless
This is a reason that has been given for centuries to justify invading and occupying countries.
But if you're in favor of colonization then you won't have an issue with this scene. It precisely what I said before: it's ok if Moroccans get invaded and occupied, but french shouldn't, because white/christian/civilized/european/developed/ {insert favorite keyword here}
But actually and tangibly superior, not as was the case with Germany for example, where both countries were in a similar level of evolution
This lasted for a while as the French intentions were pretty ambiguous to the very last minute.
In addition to the splash of pixels and colors, the dialogue is hard to follow in modern films, google "modern film voice is hard to hear" you'll see that's a common complaint.
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/a723x7/do_you_find_...
The last batch of movies that do not suffer these are LOTR trilogy, and the matrix (not the sequels). Then from then, I cannot recall any film that has a clear idea and is keen to focus on the idea and develop the film accordingly.
As a result, I've started watching everything with English subtitles on so I can fully understand what is happening. Not just Trainspotting any longer, but run-of-the-mill Hollywood schlock that should be in my wheelhouse. :-D
I watched Twin Peaks for the first time only 2 years ago during covid lock down. It was refreshing to watch something at much lower pace.
Watching Val Kilmer's facial expression change at that start. "At the drop of a hat, these guys will rock 'n roll."
I'm one in, I imagine, a very small group. But I find Mann's "Miami Vice" to be one of my favorite films of his. It's the most dangerous movie I've ever seen, it (almost) never lets up. Even the sex was dangerous. Heck, the ROSES were dangerous.
The minor nemesis Neptune is one of the scariest characters I've seen, and we only see a glimpse of him. And John Ortiz' Jose Yero. Sheesh. "I'm a disco guy."
The Heat gunfight scene is intense, the audio is amazing. A late friend of mine was in downtown LA during one of the shooting days, and relayed what it was like.
But MV is intense throughout the whole movie. Just never lets up.
For me it's still Thief (or Heat) but MV is very close
It's dreadful. Well made, nice locations, acting is as good as it could be, but the story and the attitudes of the various characters are just 'off-the-shelf' clichéd garbage.
the elevator scene in Usual Suspects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyCSU9yG63Q&t=57s
Carlito's way station scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzzxbe1IsiI
Miller's Crossing shooting scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgz-CKRzs-4
Basic Instinct's Sharon Stone first scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-t9QZgbDwU
Pirates's island scene (I can only find a dubbed version): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYLNrnsqoqY
Children of men car scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVg66ndzfpU
Hudsucker proxy board scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FPuyMHo2N8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BxDpOu3cD0&t=320
(It won the Oscar for Best Sound that year.)
Cinema’s greatest scene: ‘Casablanca’ and ‘La Marseillaise’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15847331 - Dec 2017 (86 comments)
It wouldn't be the same scene if they started to play the Spanish or Italian anthems...
"Modern standards", ha! Hasn't changed a bit.
(and—sigh—no, I'm not pro-Russian when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine, or much else for that matter)
Another amazing scene, not tremendously well know, is the one with the final words of Sacco and Vanzetti during their trial in the movie of the same name directed by Giuliano Montaldo. Gian Maria Volonté interpretation of Vanzetti was monumental.
Of course all the results (but one) are about the film or the surprising number of local businesses named Casablanca. Apparently the film is being shown in a local artsy theater tonight. Maybe I should go, I haven't seen the whole thing yet.
Similar sentences are said in the movie, but not that one -- which everybody "remembers"!
Actual quotes from the movie that sound similar:
"Play it, Sam."
and
"Play it once, Sam. For old times' sake."
Once of the greatest movies ever made, you won't be sorry.
https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movies/ is the original list from 1998.
The link to the AFI top 100 appears to have moved here:
https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movies/
The top movie is Citizen Kane, released one year prior to Casablanca (1941). The most recent movie on the list, released in 1994, was Fargo.
Keep in mind, this movie came out in 1942 and was filmed at the height of World War II, at a time when Germany looked nearly unbeatable and Nazi occupation of France was indefinite. And here was a group of refugees from that occupation, given the chance to sing their anthem with defiant pride.
For one brief moment, this wasn’t a movie. It was real life, and it was tragic, and it was brave. Reports have said that extras were crying on set during filming, and the passion is evident any time you look past the main actors to the background singers.
For Chinatown (a big crowd!) I asked for a show of hands with "How many have seen this before?" About half.
We never showed Casablanca because we figured everyone had seen it, but now I'm realizing maybe that's not true.
I'd definitely love to see it on the big screen.
and
- the ending scene of Le Train (1973) with Romy Schneider.
But so many movies scenes I like... That's just the ones that come to mind at the moment.
As for Casablanca, shame on me, I've never seen it. Just some small parts, and each times it looked so cliché that I had always delayed when I would watch it. Only in Hollywood could one have the idea of a French Prefet de Police (Louis Renault character, well named) always wearing a uniform, wearing a ridiculous kepi (Prefets have caps, not kepis) tilted on the side, with a small moustache and a eyebrow higher than the other. I mean, the scene mentioned may be beautiful (again I've never seen it) but that character is sooo much the anglo-saxon cliché of the "untrusthy Frenchman" ... almost a cartoon character.
Anyways, have to take time to watch Casablanca, and die less dumb.
"P-51! Cadillac of the skies!"
God, that's a powerful scene. So much tension of themes and emotions and situation.
It’s completely different. Schindler’s list is great, but reads like a documentary. Downfall is flashy, but lacks the spontaneity of Casablanca, which was filmed in the thick of it. Completely different atmospheres.
Also, if you are into this kind of films, the Pianist is an absolute must-see. I would put it at the same level than Schindler’s List, way above both Saving Private Ryan (which is way, way too much of a Hollywood action movie) and Downfall (which is fine, but really not in the same league).
The hand-to-hand combat sequence with Adam Goldberg is one of the most amazing I have ever seen. Not a typical action scene.
Saving Private Ryan has top-notch action and production values (yes, I know about the inaccuracies, that the Tiger tank isn't a Tiger, etc. Still top notch).
The problem with Saving Private Ryan is that it looks and plays as American propaganda. American flags waving bookend the movie, there are famous quotes by American politicians, Tom Hank's larger than life "earn this" quote, rah rah rah. That's what makes it "too Hollywood", not that the action is bad. The action is good!
Or course it can't compare to modern production, and even was considered a "filler" film at the time. As it sometimes shows, filmed on the lot in Burbank. Ingrid's daughter is on the disc saying her mother barely remembered making it and was surprised when people asked about it.
A lot of folks get tripped up on that and its "economy" of story as others mentioned here. But the important things, power of the screenplay, emotional impact, philosophical questions, performances, and "fit" with history are all top notch. Doesn't really get better than that.
Some people just like being contrarian. These "elite snobs" are the tiny fraction who reject a good movie simply because being good makes it popular. The club is not selective enough. No soup for you!
Other posters have suggested a range of other scenes; I shall just propose one more movie - a lesser known one - that is sacrifice-themed: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4263229465/
...lets we take Casablanca too seriously.
The other great scene, which is probably more editing than filming, is near its beginning where Lawrence blows out the match where the film immediately cuts to the sun rising out of the desert sand dune landscape. Just awesome.
Better would be for Victor to start singing himself and have the the crowd join him. Then, once the Nazis are already drowned out, have Rick tell the band to join -- best if because Sam gives him a you-know-what-to-do look.
Good scene but the trumpets vs voices thing has always struck me as a flaw.
"Interesting thing to note: in the Casablanca script for this scene, NONE of those actors were given the cue to cry. Due to the fact that this was being filmed whilst France was occupied by Germany in the war, and coupled with the fact that a lot of these extras were French or from French territories, a lot of them swelled up with emotion during the song and started crying spontaneously. Those tears that you see on their faces, my friends, are truly genuine! That's why this has always been my favourite scene!"
“I love you” is a tricky one.
[EDIT] Point is, yes, making that assumption is a normal part of ordinary communication outside the "well akshually" Web.
Sure, unknowables are unknowables. But many Lebron v Jordan v Wilt discussions are full of gems and help relive their legacies.
Would Brazil 1970 beat Spain 2008 or Man Utd 1999? Since we can't accurately predict the results of real games, it seems irrelevant to predict the results of hypothetical ones.
I know people enjoy it, but it's not for me.
Players are being noticed much earlier now (pro training starts much much earlier, and from a wider pool of talent), and also modern players are (mostly) saints in terms of maintaining their fitness ("healthy food" based in individual medical testing, no alcohol/smoking/drugs - and tested regularly for this) - while as for the 70's players - it's full of stories of late-night partying.
It's probably not difficult to understand, by analogy to things that you might be passionate about. I have zero interest in professional sports, but it's clear to me that hypotheticals like this are a way to motivate deeper structural thinking about your perception of the quality and strategy of given teams. You already have an intimate understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your team in the context of their modern competitors. The thought experiment of pitting them against the challenge of historical teams can easily deepen your understanding of them.
Hell, you don't even need the idea of "fun" to explain this. The concept of a thought experiment is widely, almost universally useful. I might have a blindspot due to working in research, but it's my impression that modeling hypotheticals that are impossible is a fundamental skill for creative work.
No. Spain 2008-2012 may be the best overall international team of all time. Too organized even for the front five of Brazil.
> Man Utd 1999
Yes. Good team, but a lot of things broke their way that season and they were defensively somewhat weak. Though Schmeichel was one of the first goalies to be very good with the ball at his feet, so that may give an advantage in the modern game.
I think the exercise is fun partially because it makes us ask questions about the game, how it's changed and where it's going. To answer this question you need to think about the modern tactical game, the backpass rule, how players have changed and all the other factors that make me interested in a game.
In the same way evaluating movies makes me think about the context of a movie and how it was made rather than just a pure evaluation of its "quality".
Well, there's your answer! Some people love gardening. I find it dull, hot, just generally uncomfortable work. It's a chore - no, it's a job to me if I'm being honest.
So I just let others enjoy it and I take in the visuals when their work is complete.
Not objective, sure, and not authoritative. On a ranked list of, say, 500 great films, what's the difference between 100 and 101? Probably not much and the ordering of them's basically arbitrary... but if you're only going to watch 100 of those 500, it likely is a better idea to watch 1-100 than 401-500. Some truth does fall out of the rankings, especially if you factor in more than one person's opinions. Keep seeing the same few movies near the tops of lists, then they're probably damn good.
However, with the sheer volume of creative works that exist, curation can help us find an exceptional needle in a haystack. This is why this kind of clickbait resonates.
This is part of why we want things like the Academy Awards to be objective & authoritative, when they are neither.
The real value is in the argument for art, the argument for beauty. Someone says, “sure grape juice is fine, but try this wine,” and they are making an argument that the initially off-putting flavors and lack of sweetness aren’t a bad thing. The ultimate judge is you, however. You are the person who can decide if the scene in Apocalypto where they have to jump over the waterfall provides a better or more useful artistic experience to a scene in The Godfather. And then, you can change your mind, or not.
What is it with people leaving controversial rhetorical comments?
It spawns discussion. Which really, is the whole point of art.
Arguably not. My understanding is the only purpose of art is to be art.
Ars Gratia Artis.