Chapotraphouse

My proper non-bit thoughts on this are that the same thing is happening to movie fans as it is with video game fans desperately clammering and overcompensating to be considered one of the big boys of art (though to a lesser degree). Film is an art form but terms like "cinephile" are just ridiculous, when did you last hear an avid reader call themself a "literatophile" or a lover of paintings all themselves a "paintophile"?

The increasing approach to the enjoyment of art as if it's an identity, combined with all these checklists of the most important films to see "to be a cinephile" has led us to a point where there's a million people who've seen almost all the (easier) films on the list and have a familiarity with the single most popular film of an art movement / genre and might not even know the names of more than a couple of its bedfellows, it's a symptom of trying to fill out letterboxd lists and get the green completion bar rather than organically engaging with the number 1 film because of name recognition, then checking out a load of other films by director and their contemporaries.

I was being a bit hyperbolic with my example of a film to watch, but i was mainly referring to like all the corbucci films that arent quite django or the great silence but are still a blast like navajo joe, specialists, or hellraisers - they're like perfect examples of good, well made films that are really enjoyable but barely anybody watches them bcs they're not the absolute peak of their genre. The point is to learn to engage with art for the reason of loving art (even if its not the absolute peak of human creation), not for conferring the label of "high brow art appreciator" to the viewer.