Best and Favorites

One of the things I’ve always been interested in is the distinction that movie people will make between someone’s best work and their personal favorite. An example that seems to crop up a lot is that everyone seems to agree that Stanley Kubrick’s best movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey, but at the same time, almost everyone I know counts The Shining as their favorite of his movies. Everyone seems to agree on this, everyone but me, because Barry Lyndon is my personal favorite. Don't look at me like that. I don't have to justify myself to you.

I don’t know why it is that we don’t call our favorite the best. It’s like we know that we’re supposed to call say for example Citizen Kane the best movie ever, even though most people who know would claim The Magnificent Ambersons as their favorite Wells movie. Why not claim Ambersons then? Why does Kane win out? This confuses me because I’m not all that wild about Kane anyway.

Why do we do that? Why not just claim that our favorite movie is the best?

I think partly there is the reasoning that we hold artistic quality in a different light than we do enjoyment. It’s as if we know that while we really like Raiders of the Lost Ark, for the very valid reason that it’s a piece of cinematic perfection, we should really go for things that inform us about the human condition or something. Raiders isn’t a terribly improving film, but it’s a lot of fun, and really worthy things aren’t supposed to be fun. Artistically worthy things are supposed to be dull, drawn out, and tell you things that are blindingly obvious if you take half a second to think about them. So why not just stand up and admit that Raiders is actually Spielberg's best work? Yes, he did other good things over the years, but not as good. Some of his later movies carried more weight emotionally, but I’m not sure any of them carried the really great satisfaction of watch a Nazi’s face melt. That isn’t to say that Schindler's List isn’t very good, it is. I’m just suggesting it could have been better if the Nazi’s faces had melted in that movie. Think about it.

There is something about the weight of art, the craft of importance, or possibly the power of pretension that keeps favorite from equaling best. I always suspect that educated people, people who should know better, always get a little shame faced at enjoying something that’s just plain fun. Like we all enjoy Versus, because it’s got zombies and gangsters and sword fights and guns and people getting their faces punched out. It could only be more awesome with tap dancing dinosaurs. But we feel like we really shouldn’t be enjoying this and reminding us that we still haven’t see that 4 hour version of Hamlet yet. Something about the eyes sticking to the guy’s hand maybe tells us that we really should be watching something with a little more class, like Hercules vs. the Moon Men. It’s a nasty, fattening bacon cheeseburger that begs us to eat it, even though we know we should be sticking to the salad and symbolism of The Seventh Seal. Not that there’s anything wrong with The Seventh Seal, I like it… but there’s not really any sword fights or car chases in it, are there?