Ovation Inflation
It’s pretty clear at this point that we need some sort of standards body regulating the standing ovation industry at the Cannes Film Festival. The numbers are both out of control and all over the place. If nothing else, we need a rating/ranking system to be able to put context around the ovations. Because they're a totally serious and not at all silly measuring stick.
For the past few days, Xitter has been lit up with word that so-and-so movie got such-and-such minutes of ovations. At first, I was falling victim to this: "wow, must be a great work of art!" Then the headlines kept coming and coming and coming. And you quickly see some problems and also some weird patterns emerging...
First and foremost, a very odd number of the ovation marks seem to gravitate towards seven minutes. Why seven? Unclear. Presumably because it's a number that seems more impressive than the good old five-minute mark. But it's also seemingly random enough that someone wouldn't just make it up. You'd think that, right? Wrong.1 Read on.
Anyway, seven minutes feels like the bare minimum standing ovation time you now need to be considered a strong ovation. Below that, you're going to get some weird headlines. Above that, the race is on...
Take Oh, Canada, with its sad 3-minute ovation. I mean, did everyone even have time to stand up to clap in three minutes?
Scott Roxborough
Wait, perhaps it was 4-minutes, just enough time for everyone to stand. Phew:
Matt Donnelly
Regardless of the length, at least it wasn't labeled as a "robotic" ovation, such as the 3.5-minute – lol – one Léa Seydoux got for The Second Act:
Ramin Setoodeh
Cate Blanchett also got 4-minutes – which was somehow mainly about her and not about her film Rumours, as most of the headlines indicate:
Angelique Jackson
You know what beat Blanchett? Emma Stone’s new movie about sex cults and cannibalism. Kinds of Kindness also got a comically specific "4.5-minute" ovation. We're really doing the '.5' thing, I guess. They couldn't even round up to five minutes?! Did someone literally stop a stopwatch at the 30 second mark?
Ellise Shafer
Coming in just under the "strong" minimum was Nicolas Cage's The Surfer, which is undoubtedly very strange because every movie he makes now is very strange. But how am I sure this one is strange? A mere 6-minute ovation, of course:
Alex Ritman
Furiosa looks great, but also got a 6-minute ovation. Some publicist surely must be working the phones trying to add a minute to the number...
Ramin Setoodeh
Update: they did their job, adding not just one minute, but "nearly" two! We're also going to need the standards body to weigh in on "nearly" now though. Is that 7:45 and above? Clearly it's not 7:30 or we'd get "7.5" per the standard set above.
Nancy Tartaglione
Meanwhile, Bird flew in at just 7-minutes. Solid work, Barry Keoghan:
Ruairi Scott Byrne
Variety notes that Kevin Costner started sobbing during the 7-minute ovation for his new film Horizon, which seems a bit much given that we all know that 7-minutes is the bare minimum for a strong film (then again, some reports have Chris Hemsworth getting emotional over the 6-minute ovation listed above – keep it together, Thor)...
Tatiana Siegel
Ah but wait, People says the ovation was 10-minutes! Much more sob-worthy. Also, the ovation scale is clearly similar to the Richter scale – less in magnitude and more in the way that we can update the number after the fact once the Earth has stopped moving...
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Megaopolis – clearly either the most interesting or un-interesting movie ever made – also was able to hit the 7-minute mark. Feels a bit lite given the non-stop talk about how batshit crazy and/or brilliant this movie is?
Nancy Tartaglione
Not to worry though, The Hollywood Reporter boosted the number to 10-minutes:
Scott Feinberg
The 10-minute after-the-fact boost is important because it beats Selena Gomez's 9-minute-mark. Which had been the number to beat. Costner and Coppola simply could not let someone who began her career acting on Barney & Friends best them...
Ramin Setoodeh
Hold that thought, as the Emilia Perez ovation is now up to 11-minutes! Try again, Costner.
Nancy Tartaglione
Okay, he will. Horizon just hit 11-minutes too!
Patrick Hipes
Also coming in at 11 (if 7 is the threshold for a "strong" ovation, 11 looks to be the barrier for "great" ovation – it goes to... ah, nevermind), Demi Moore's The Substance:
Matt Donnelly
Oh wait, Emilia Perez and Horizon are also sitting at 11-minutes? We need a winner here. Let's go ahead and upgrade that 11 to 13:
Kashvi Raj Singh
Sure, it started at 9 minutes, but what's a 4 minute bump amongst friends?
Scott Feinberg
Anyway, all of these have nothing on what are clearly the greatest films of all time, as relayed by IndieWire:
- Belle – 14 Minutes: An animated film from 2021 you've undoubtedly never heard of...
- Capernaum – 15 Minutes: a Lebanese film from 2018 you've undoubtedly never heard of...
- The Paperboy – 15 Minutes: a 2012 movie starring Matthew McConaughey, John Cusack, Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, and David Oyelowo – that I've literally never heard of until now.
- The Neon Demon – 17 Minutes: a 2016 Nicolas Winding Refn film with a cool name but was not Drive...
- Mud – 18 Minutes: I really liked Mud, I probably would not have given it an 18-minute standing ovation, but clearly the Cannes audience loves Matthew McConaughey, alright, alright?
- Fahrenheit 9/11 – 20 Minutes: Michael Moore's 2004 documentary was perfectly-timed ovation bait.
- Pan’s Labyrinth – 22 Minutes: Guillermo del Toro’s movie is certainly interesting, haunting, and memorable – all much more so than The Shape of Water which somehow won the Best Picture Oscar a decade later.
1 Is someone really there with a stopwatch/Apple Watch actually timing such things? Presumably no, which is another part of the problem. But also cleary someone is trying -- or pretend trying -- to keep track?