Let’s pretend that a charity is putting together a time capsule that will be opened in 500 years. This is far enough into the future that most people will probably only be aware of the broad historical events of our time period - the real “how we live” is something most will likely know very little about (so this charity assumes). They’ve assigned us at the SDMB with the task of selecting 20 movies to represent the 20th century (a DVD player will be included in the capsule of course along with batteries). How should we go about picking the movies that we’d want people to see in the future? Would you try to capture the historical trends of the century with movies representative of those trends? Would you instead try to capture social trends? Should we include dark but influential films such as “Triumph of the Will”? Would you forego trends altogether and just pick movies based purely on entertainment value? Something else? Pick however movies you like, but say why you think those movies are worthy to be included and what you hope those future viewers will see in them.
I wrote my OP when I came up with the questions, but now that I’m trying to come up with movies it’s much harder! But I feel I must provide a few movies to get the content rolling so I’ll post my initial thoughts.
I think in 500 years the 3 main historical events that people will remember will be: The World Wars; the Atomic Bomb; and the fact that we went to the moon for the first time. In order to make our film choice relevant for future viewers, some of our movies are going to have to tie to those specific historical events.
For World War 2 I absolutely would include “Triumph of the Will”. The fact that that film is propaganda put out by the Nazi leadership to rally their troops, and yet at the same time it’s rallying them to prepare themselves for a war based on race is just so self damning. For the opposite side I think “The Diary of Anne Frank” would be a great contender for the human toll the values expressed in Triumph of the Will had on the lives of their countrymen that were considered inferior by their leaders.
For the moon landings I’d include Apollo 13. That we walked on the moon will be well known but I bet few will know how the Apollo spacecraft worked, how it communicated with Mission Control, that there was more than 1 mission to the moon and that the entire trip was risky. Apollo 13 captures that era nicely and accurately. I thought about “The Right Stuff” but it treats any character that is not an astronaut as cartoonish. Even so I think it captures the spirit of the Mercury astronauts pretty well. My only real problem with the movie is that it falls apart completely when they introduce “the fireflies” as coming from Australian aborigines.
I wonder if we should include movies capturing the rise of teen culture? Back to the Future is a very fun movie, but I wonder if a viewer in 500 years would be able to tell any difference between the time periods in the film? What other movies could capture this culture? The Breakfast Club?
As for movies that are just fun and influential we’d need to include Star Wars. It was hugely popular and influenced how kids grew up and what they played with for the entire final quarter of the 20th century. I would only include the first one though - anything more than that is just wasting valuable space.
And one more to add, we’d need to add “The Greats” which would be those movies considered in our time frame as the best movies made.
Gone With the Wind (still relevant after 70 years)
Cassablanca (a great love story with interesting characters)
Lawrence of Arabia (outstanding cinematography)
The Godfather (outstanding acting and filmmaking)
Folks may laugh at me for this one, but I say “Jaws” Not quite the first film of an influential director, but probably the most imitated horror film since it was made. There was horror, there was humor. There was also a lot of suspense, not just gore. I think the most brilliant scene was one in which nobody was hurt, and you never saw the shark. That’s the night time scene with the two guys and the roast.
Oh, and the first picture ever to win all five top Academy Awards, “It Happened One Night” A perfect example of 30’s comedy, with the mores of the time.
There was a thread about movies that defined the decade. My choices:
30’s - Gone with the wind
40’s Cassablanca
50’s Singing in the Rain
60’s West Side Story
70’s The Godfather
80’s ET The Extraterrestrial
90’s Titanic
00’s anything by Avatar
“It Happened One Night” is an outstanding choice for capturing “slice of life” moments from the OP. In fact, I’m going to watch it again, it’s been years since I’ve seen it. I’m still trying to think of ensemble movies for different generations of the 20th century. Sadly, the majority of movies that are ensemble casts across varying occupations and life situations are also somewhat trite. I mentioned the Breakfast Club above and the more I think about it the more I actually like the idea. It really does portray teen angst in a High School environment in the 80’s. Also, “Crash”. It’s extremely heavy handed but seems to capture some of the different lifestyles and moral quandaries we experience. I’m sure we can do better than that though so suggestions are welcome.
Jaws is a good choice, I figure Steven Spielberg is going to be represented in our selection anyway. It’s an effective horror film. Hopefully there will still be sharks in 500 years, but if not this might give them the wrong idea for why they’re no longer around!
12 Angry Men, A Christmas Story, Do the Right Thing.
Schindler’s List
I think Forest Gump would be a great choice. It covers many periods in one single movie.
As part of your goal is history, I’d recommend “The Best Years of Our Lives” to capture the problems of the postwar era.
There should be a way of telling our future audience which movies are totally fictional and which are based on actual events. If actual 20th century history gets somewhat muddled, something like “Forest Gump” is exactly the wrong movie to include. And “Diary of Ann Frank” is a great choice, but meaningless if they don’t know the historical context. We have no way of knowing which historical events will be remembered that far into the future.
And this is a great point. It’s not so important to tell “The History” of the 20th century as it is to “tell the story of the 20th century based on actual events”. Seems apropos to tell a fictionalized story using fictionalized stories :-).
But then that raises the question about what story we should tell - should we tell it from the standpoint of historical events? What if we instead focus on social changes? For the 20’s you’d want to represent the lifestyle lived by tenuous riches. “The Great Gatsby” seems a good choice for this period. The 30’s you’d have depression and despair so maybe something like “Of Mice and Men”. The 40’s you have the world at war which we’ve already covered to some degree. The 50’s you’d have strong social order and status. The 60’s would be counter culture and the rise of the Civil Liberties movements (which we’ve not found a good movie for yet). The 70’s would be the end of the counter culture revolution as far as the hippie movement. The 80’s would be materialism and the 90’s slackerism.
Saving Private Ryan, for a closer look at the way wars were conducted. In the future, all wars will be done by robots and man’s place is to build and maintain those robots. They’ll have no way to understand how we actually used to send our children and men into war
[Discovery Channel in 300 years]… Tragically, all the Great Whites were killed off by the end of the 20th century due to a series of oxygen-tank explosions that decimated the population below replenishment levels…[/DCin300y]
Birth of a Nation
The Little Tramp
The Deerhunter
The Big Chill
Norma Rae
The Exorcist
Ghandi
Chariots of Fire
Galipolli
K-2
The Last Emperor
Sophie’s Choice
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
The Matrix
and more, but I think these are indicative of how we perceived various issues like death, pride, shame, duty, exploration.
American Graffiti, which makes me forget I’m watching a movie every time I see it. It transports me back to the summer of 1962.
In the distant future, this will probably be remembered as George Lucas’s finest work (along with the original Star Wars, before it was fucked up).
Realistically I don’t think any movies easily or readily tell the tale of our times. If we were to look back at the 15th century, what would we look for? Documentaries.
Of course we do not exactly have film docos of the 1400s but there is a substantial body of writings and records from that era plus the art from that time. These require hard work to understand and interpret but they are rich nevertheless.
So IMHO docos would be much more valuable. Perhaps, The Remarkable 20th Century The Remarkable 20th Century (TV Movie 2000) - IMDb
and Civilization: Is the West History? http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/civilization-is-the-west-history/