Today I learned, via Mental Floss, about the existence of the longest movie ever made, the 2012 Swedish documentary Logistics, which is 857 hours long. Honestly, it sounds amazing, and I kinda do want to watch it… though I might fast-forward through some of it. (You can rent it on Vimeo.)
It got me thinking about really long movies, and the marathon movie outings I’ve had. I saw a rerelease of Lawrence of Arabia (187 minutes) in the late 90s that included an intermission, as the original release would have had. I know I saw Kenneth Branagh’s (in)famously all-the-words Hamlet (240 minutes) in cinemas during its 1996 theatrical release, and I don’t remember an intermission but it must have had one. (The Los Angeles Times review at the time says it did.) And I’ve happily sat through Titanic (194 minutes) at least four times theatrically, and that never had an intermission.
I don’t recall the running time of any of these movies putting me off.
How long does a film have to be before it’s too long for you to sit through? Tell us about the really long films you have endured, either at home or in theaters.
Maybe this is a bit of a moot question now that we’re all mostly watching movies at home, where it’s easy to stop it for a few minutes and far less disruptive than popping out of a cinema showing for a toilet break or to top up on snacks. (I never run out in the middle of a cinema showing, not even for a second, because I don’t want to miss even a moment of a film, but I have no problem with pausing a film at home, for obvious reasons.)
Vulture has a list of “The 33 Best Movies Over 3 Hours Long” — updated last year with the note that at-home pandemic viewing makes them go down easier — if you need a reminder of marathon movies.
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I’ve watched a number of Indian movies (Bollywood and otherwise) at home, and they have a knack for rolling action and drama forward and dragging you along by the shirt front like nobody else. And then – Intermission! HEY?!! What time is it anyway, I’m tired and hungry! So yeah, they make long movies, drama and comedy both. It can be a challenge. But they make very good movies, so ya gotta stick with ’em.
You’re right, Hamlet did have an intermission. My friend and I agreed that it was so good it made four hours fly by like three and a quarter. Eight years ago, I achieved a personal best by watching five movies in a row at the theater, leaving a semi-coherent comment here on the Pacific Rim review moments before collapsing into a coma (my only sustenance was a solitary granola bar – I learned my lesson and typically also smuggle in a couple burritos and save the granola bar for dessert nowadays). The specific order was:
1) Despicable Me 2 (Worse than the first with a simple family-values plot, but entertaining)
2) World War Z (first third promising – last two thirds lazy)
3) Man of Steel (Everything up to the last brawl amazing)
4) Monsters U (aggressively mediocre, but fun to see details borrowed from the Berkeley campus)
5) Pacific Rim (a nice light desert to complete the marathon)
Now that I’m of middle age, I doubt I could watch more than three lengthy or four shorter movies in a row (about ten hours max). The limiting factor is not my willingness to sit and concentrate – I can sit and read an entire novel cover to cover in a single afternoon of five to six hours, and during my annual birthday gaming orgy, I play a single game for eight-ten hours over multiple consecutive days.
My eyes simply don’t have the endurance they used to. After about eleven hours, they start to water and twitch, and I have to call it an evening. I suppose I could use eyedrops, but that seems akin to performance enhancing drugs, and I do my best to listen to my body as much as possible and acquiesce to its requests.
Of course, watching movies at home is much easier on the eyes and butt. Now, in the age of streaming and binging, everyone does it, but back in the mid 90’s when only dedicated nerds watched anime, I once binged fansubs of the entire Maison Ikkoku series, all 96 episodes in a row nonstop over two days – that’s about 17 hours a day, and as foreign movie buffs know, reading subtitles places additional strain on the ol’ eyeballs. By the end, I was virtually braindead, crying and yelling at my TV like a madman, “For God’s sake, just fuck already!” Best. Catharsis. Ever.
Same here, except the five movie were all press screenings.
I generally agree with Ebert’s dictum (for certain values of “bad”):
“No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.”
For me, a good movie is engrossing enough that I don’t even notice the time. But sadly, the bladder is a limiting factor for me. I was half-expecting *No Time To Die* to be (like *Spectre*) a tedious slog that I’d sit through mostly out of a fannish sense of obligation… but I actually found it riveting, and the best Bond film in quite some time for me. That said, I do like to have something to drink during a movie, and unavoidably had to answer nature’s call during the film. (I timed it for when it looked like they were going to spend several minutes on Rami Malek’s character’s backstory, which seemed to have a fair chance to be boring.)
I seem to be in the middle of an ongoing, improvisational theatre piece, with actors making up material spontaneously. I’m impressed with their stamina (and my own), but it’s really taxing. I’m also amazed by how many of the movies and TV shows I’m watching from my hospital bed start to feel spontaneous when I’m viewing them in this state of mind, even when I’m watching for the second or third time.
I hope you feel better soon
if i’m interested, it’s never long enough, the minute i’m bored, it’s too long. Lawrence of Arabia, Hamlet, all three Lord of the Rings in a row… not too long. Eyes Wide Shut? too long three minutes into it.
Very nicely put – it’s funny how Time always does the opposite of what we want – it rushes by when we want to linger, and it drags when we’re itching for it to be over – movies are possibly the best illustration of this