31 Oct 2022

Park Chan-wook’s Closet Picks

The director of Oldboy and Decision to Leave talks about the influence of Ingmar Bergman, his complicated feelings about The Makioka Sisters, the way Mike Leigh works with actors, and his admiration for Don Siegel’s films.

Park Chan-wook: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

11 single, 1 box set

single films

chosen on their own

box sets

one choice, many films

films reached

the same visit, box sets opened

Watch on Vimeo

This one is not on Criterion's YouTube channel, and their Vimeo copy will not play outside criterion.com · 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.

537 The Magician 1958 522 Red Desert 1964 516 Stagecoach 1939 567 The Makioka Sisters 1983 562 Blow Out 1981 581 Les cousins 1959 SET Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975 659 Life Is Sweet 1990 678 La notte 1961 704 Riot in Cell Block 11 1954 755 Le silence de la mer 1949 76 Brief Encounter 1945

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Magician	Ingmar Bergman	1958	4
2	Red Desert	Michelangelo Antonioni	1964	4
3	Stagecoach	John Ford	1939	7
4	The Makioka Sisters	Kon Ichikawa	1983	1
5	Blow Out	Brian De Palma	1981	2
6	Les cousins	Claude Chabrol	1959	2
7	Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975 box set, 15 films			8
8	Life Is Sweet	Mike Leigh	1990	4
9	La notte	Michelangelo Antonioni	1961	8
10	Riot in Cell Block 11	Don Siegel	1954	1
11	Le silence de la mer	Jean-Pierre Melville	1949	2
12	Brief Encounter	David Lean	1945	4

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1939 to 1990, box sets 1954 to 1975

Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975

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 26films run 40.9 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 204.7 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 3.92 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Two of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was The Makioka Sisters, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Mike Leigh, through Life Is Sweet, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com