9 Apr 2024
Annie Baker and Lucian Johnston’s Closet Picks
The writer-director of Janet Planet joins the film’s editor in praising Maurice Pialat’s unsentimental depiction of childhood, their collaborator Maria von Hausswolff’s cinematography in Godland, and the ineffable magic of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Filmed together, each with a page of their own: Annie Baker and Lucian Johnston
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.
| Chose | Director | Year | Taken by | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  L’enfance nue | Maurice Pialat | 1968 | |
| 2 |  L’argent | Robert Bresson | 1983 | |
| 3 |  A Matter of Life and Death | Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | 1946 | |
| 4 |  Godland | Hlynur Pálmason | 2022 | |
| 5 |  Design for Living | Ernst Lubitsch | 1933 | |
| 6 |  The Complete Films of Agnès Varda box set, 22 films |
How far across film history it reaches
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 27films run 42.7 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.
That is 427.3 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 6.17 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Two of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was L’enfance nue, taken by this visit alone.
This visit reached the work of Agnès Varda, through Cléo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda, through Vagabond, Agnès Varda, through La Pointe Courte, Agnès Varda, through Le bonheur, Agnès Varda, through Jacquot de Nantes, Agnès Varda, through Uncle Yanco, Agnès Varda, through Black Panthers, Agnès Varda, through Lions Love (. . . and Lies), Agnès Varda, through Mur Murs, Agnès Varda, through Documenteur, Agnès Varda, through One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, Agnès Varda, through Daguerréotypes, Agnès Varda, through The Beaches of Agnès, Agnès Varda, through Varda by Agnès, Agnès Varda, through The Gleaners and I, Agnès Varda, through One Hundred and One Nights, Agnès Varda, through The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later, Agnès Varda, through Jane B. par Agnès V., Agnès Varda, through Kung-Fu Master!, Agnès Varda, through Faces Places, Agnès Varda, through Les créatures, Agnès Varda, through Agnès de ci de là Varda, Hlynur Pálmason, through Godland, JR, through Faces Places, Agnès Varda, through Cléo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda, through Vagabond, Agnès Varda, through La Pointe Courte, Agnès Varda, through Le bonheur, Agnès Varda, through Jacquot de Nantes, Agnès Varda, through Uncle Yanco, Agnès Varda, through Black Panthers, Agnès Varda, through Lions Love (. . . and Lies), Agnès Varda, through Mur Murs, Agnès Varda, through Documenteur, Agnès Varda, through One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, Agnès Varda, through Daguerréotypes, Agnès Varda, through The Beaches of Agnès, Agnès Varda, through Varda by Agnès, Agnès Varda, through The Gleaners and I, Agnès Varda, through One Hundred and One Nights, Agnès Varda, through The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later, Agnès Varda, through Jane B. par Agnès V., Agnès Varda, through Kung-Fu Master!, Agnès Varda, through Faces Places, Agnès Varda, through Les créatures, Agnès Varda, through Agnès de ci de là Varda, Hlynur Pálmason, through Godland and JR, through Faces Places, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.