10 Jan 2015

Ruben Östlund’s Closet Picks

The Palme d’Or–winning director praises Catherine Breillat’s cinematic exploration of sexuality, talks about Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes’s collaborations, and shares a story from the set of one of his films.

Ruben Östlund: 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

10

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.

740 The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant 1972 SET Three Films by Luis Buñuel 259 Fat Girl 2001 721 Love Streams 1984 374 Bicycle Thieves 1948 SET Fanny and Alexander

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant	Rainer Werner Fassbinder	1972	5
2	Three Films by Luis Buñuel box set, 3 films			8
3	Fat Girl	Catherine Breillat	2001	7
4	Love Streams	John Cassavetes	1984	8
5	Bicycle Thieves	Vittorio De Sica	1948	11
6	Fanny and Alexander box set, 3 films			7

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1948 to 2001, box sets 1972 to 1983

Three Films by Luis Buñuel

Fanny and Alexander

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 10films run 20.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 205.7 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 7.67 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 Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, taken by 5 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Catherine Breillat, through Fat Girl, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com