Last week, Sight & Sound Magazine released its 2022 list of the best films ever made. If you aren't familiar with the poll, it carries significantly greater weight with cinephiles than most best-of lists because a) it's released, census-like, every ten years, and b) it is voted on by a wide range of people who have devoted their professional lives to film, including "1,639 participating critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics" who each submit their own top 10 list, not just the magazine's staff. Many notable directors like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino vote in a separate directors' poll.

The changes to the epochal list have kicked up a ton of debate on Film Twitter. Is it good for the health of the medium that Chantal Akerman's three hour and 21 minute experimental feminist landmark Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles topped the list, dethroning Alfred Hitchcock's more immediately accessible Vertigo? Do any of the additions released since the prior poll — Get Out, Parasite, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Moonlight — deserve a place over movies from important filmmakers like Howard Hawks, Terrence Malick, and Steven Spielberg, all of whom are omitted? Has the list become too influenced by the Criterion Collection which restores and re-releases historically important films? And, most importantly, does this kind of list even matter? And if it does, for whom?

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Well, it depends on a few things, including how you approach movies, lists, and the concept of canonization. In my experience, if you're interested in film, this kind of list matters as much or as little as you want it to.

To explain why, I need to get into the way that I, personally, use lists. When, after college, I was getting back into video games for the first time since 2012, I turned to podcasts as a way to catch up on what was current. Waypoint Radio, The Game Informer Show, and Kotaku Splitscreen all helped me to build a rough mental sketch of the gaming landscape, circa 2016. But, as I looked to expand my understanding of video game history, I frequently pulled up IGN's The Top 100 Video Games of All Time List to see which canonical greats I had missed out on. Getting into a medium for the first time, or getting back into a medium you haven't paid attention to in a while, or, just, diving deeper into a medium you love, can be overwhelming. Podcasts and best-of lists provided handholds as I attempted to scale the mountainous pile of shame that had accumulated in my absence.

Citizen Kane

Similarly, when I got back into film during the pandemic, I used the same methods. I listened to podcasts, particularly Blank Check with Griffin and David, which helpfully also provided lists for me to work through. That show moves through directors' filmographies, one movie per episode, providing context on the history, tracing familiar themes from film to film, and generally diving deep on movies. I also started making my own lists. Now, when I watch a film from a new director I like, I'll add their screenshots of their full filmography from Wikipedia to my phone and cross each film off as I watch it. I'm a goal-oriented person, so having concrete ways to mark my progress is helpful.

The Sight & Sound list will obviously have a wider reach than my own personal lists, so many of its participants put deep thought into what films they choose to include. The list has the power to highlight underseen films or reinforce the greatness of canonical works. But, for you, as a reader, the function doesn't need to be any different than the role my personal lists play for me. If you're a young cinephile going deep on film, a list like that can provide a wide variety of movies for you to explore. Jeanne Dielman might not be your cup of tea, but 2001: A Space Odyssey could change your life. Tokyo Story might be too slow, but you gravitate to the straightforward entertainment of Singin' in the Rain. Or, you might not be into Westerns like The Searchers, but are drawn in by the intimate storytelling of Pather Panchali. All of those feelings are valid, but without the list, you might not discover the films in the first place.

We all need ways to organize our world. If the canon is good for anything, it's certainly good for that.

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