Closet Picks

18 Apr 2023

Benjamin Millepied’s Closet Picks

The director, choreographer, and dancer talks about the evolution of Elia Kazan’s cinematic style, Terrence Malick’s unique ability to capture moments of grace on set, and Bob Fosse’s use of editing as rhythm and movement.

Benjamin Millepied: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices
6
4 single, 2 box sets
single films
4
chosen on their own
box sets
2
one choice, many films
films reached
11
the same visit, box sets opened

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.

single film, with its spine number box set

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1954 to 2011, box sets 1943 to 2002
The Qatsi Trilogy
Eclipse Series 23: The First Films of Akira Kurosawa
a single film, at its year a box set, across the years of its films 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 11films run 18.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 185.5 minutes of film for each of its 6 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 6 choices had been taken by 8.5 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 Tree of Life, taken by 2 visits in total.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com