27 Feb 2024
JR’s Closet Picks
The artist and codirector of Agnès Varda’s documentary Faces Places talks about his intimate collaboration with the late iconic filmmaker, praises world-expanding masterpieces like La haine and Roma, and shouts out his friend Louis Garrel.
JR: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest
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 |  The Complete Films of Agnès Varda box set, 22 films | |||
| 2 |  John Cassavetes: Five Films box set, 6 films | |||
| 3 |  Amores perros | Alejandro G. Iñárritu | 2000 | |
| 4 |  WALL·E | Andrew Stanton | 2008 | |
| 5 |  Mean Streets | Martin Scorsese | 1973 | |
| 6 |  La haine | Mathieu Kassovitz | 1995 | |
| 7 |  The Innocent | Louis Garrel | 2022 | |
| 8 |  EO | Jerzy Skolimowski | 2022 | |
| 9 |  Roma | Alfonso Cuarón | 2018 |
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 35films run 61.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.
That is 410.3 minutes of film for each of its 9 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 9 choices had been taken by 10.67 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was The Innocent, 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, Alfonso Cuarón, through Roma, Andrew Stanton, through WALL·E, Jerzy Skolimowski, through EO and Louis Garrel, through The Innocent, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.
One of the choices is their own: Faces Places. Left out of the lineage count, because reaching for yourself is not reaching for somebody else.