30 Mar 2017

Josh and Benny Safdie’s Closet Picks

Mike Leigh’s Meantime, Ermanno Olmi’s Il posto, and Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped top the list for the sibling duo behind Good Time and Uncut Gems.

Filmed together, each with a page of their own: Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie

choices

12

every one a single film

single films

12

chosen on their own

box sets

0

none this visit

films reached

12

no set to open

Criterion's own upload · on criterion.com

This visit as a strip, a cell for each choice: paler the older the film, indigo for a box set, which is one cell however many films it holds. The order is the order Criterion's own page lists them in, which is probably but not provably the order they came off the shelf.

890 Meantime 1984 650 A Man Escaped 1956 767 My Beautiful Laundrette 1985 851 Fox and His Friends 1975 374 Bicycle Thieves 1948 10 Walkabout 1971 595 The Moment of Truth 1965 834 Blood Simple 1984 812 The Player 1992 194 Il posto 1961 886 L’argent 1983 697 Tess 1979

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Meantime	Mike Leigh	1984	2
2	A Man Escaped	Robert Bresson	1956	8
3	My Beautiful Laundrette	Stephen Frears	1985	5
4	Fox and His Friends	Rainer Werner Fassbinder	1975	2
5	Bicycle Thieves	Vittorio De Sica	1948	11
6	Walkabout	Nicolas Roeg	1971	5
7	The Moment of Truth	Francesco Rosi	1965	2
8	Blood Simple	Joel Coen	1984	6
9	The Player	Robert Altman	1992	5
10	Il posto	Ermanno Olmi	1961	7
11	L’argent	Robert Bresson	1983	5
12	Tess	Roman Polanski	1979	3

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1948 to 1992

a single film, at its year the collection, by decade

The axis is the same 1920 to 2030 on every visit page, so a haul that stayed inside one decade looks like one. A box set is drawn across the years of the films inside it, which is a range of release dates and not a claim about the set. Nothing here is in the order the choices were made: displayed position moves film year by a fifth of one percent of its variance, which is not a slope worth drawing.

How long this haul is

Its 12films run 21.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 108.2 minutes of film for each of its 12 choices, counting a box set as the one choice it was. Across the 375 visits with a complete total, the median is 136.4 minutes.

How unusual this haul was

Its 12 choices had been taken by 5.08 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Every one of them has been taken by somebody else too. The least-picked was The Moment of Truth, taken by 2 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Mike Leigh, through Meantime and Mike Leigh, through Meantime, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com