#firstworldproblems: When Long Films Last Even Longer

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to identify the ways in which long films might be seen to constitute a challenge to the capitalist ideology that underwrites much of contemporary life. I shall do this not by identifying what makes a long film long, but by working with the very relativity of the term (it is not that all movies over, say, three hours in length are ‘long’). That is, I shall argue that a film becomes ‘long’ when it contradicts the demands of contemporary life under capitalism. I shall then explore to what extent this contradiction always holds if all films are, regardless of running time, spectacles of a sort, and thus not a challenge to, but a critical component of life under capitalism. Finally, I shall suggest that it is when films are unnecessarily longer than they should be, e.g. when the internet is not working for online film viewing, that we have perhaps the most powerful challenge to the ‘busy’ ideology of life under capitalism.