3 Apr 2024

Bertrand Bonello’s Closet Picks

The writer, director, and composer talks about the enduring inspiration of The Age of Innocence, praises the tonal precision of David Cronenberg’s Crash, and shares his love for Pasolini’s potent mix of poetry and intelligence.

Bertrand Bonello: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

5

4 single, 1 box set

single films

4

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

13

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.

913 The Age of Innocence 1993 1059 Crash 1996 354 Clean, Shaven 1994 SET Pasolini 101 519 Close-up 1990

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Age of Innocence	Martin Scorsese	1993	7
2	Crash	David Cronenberg	1996	6
3	Clean, Shaven	Lodge Kerrigan	1994	1
4	Pasolini 101 box set, 9 films			13
5	Close-up	Abbas Kiarostami	1990	8

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1990 to 1996, box sets 1961 to 1969

Pasolini 101

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 13films run 22.9 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 274.8 minutes of film for each of its 5 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 5 choices had been taken by 7 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Clean, Shaven, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of David Cronenberg, through Crash, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com