Est Things
We’re fascinated by est things. You know, like the biggest, smallest, longest, shortest, tallest, what-everest things in the world.
Such est fascination is certainly why the Guinness Book of World Records has sold over 150 million copies (making it one of the best-selling copyrighted books of all time) and why Roadtrippers Magazine has compiled a list of The World’s Largest Roadside Attractions. Among them: the tallest pistachio nut (30 feet high), the heaviest yarn ball (27,017 pounds), and the highest capacity fire hydrant (1,500 gallons per minute).
Stories & Songs
Given such fascination, it’s perhaps no surprise that two of this blog’s most popular posts are the Shortest Stories Ever Written and the Shortest Songs Ever Recorded.
But lately, I’ve been contemplating other extremes. Not the longest published story. That category is clearly topped by Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (well over a million words and running approximately 4,000 pages).
Nor have I been wondering too much about the longest recorded song. Guinness give that title to PC III’s “The Rise and Fall of Bossanova.” Clocking in at over 13 hours, “Rise and Fall” is certainly long, but it plays more like ambient music than a song. For my money, Tool’s “Fear Inoculum” (10 minutes, 21 seconds) is the true winner there.
For an indepth discussion of long-form music, check out What is the Longest Song Ever Recorded? at the blog site of musician and actor J. Scalco.
Long-Form Cinema
Instead, I’ve been wondering about the longest movies. Not underground films like Andy Warhol’s Empire (8 hours) or museum pieces like The Clock (24 hours). The movies I’m contemplating are films that tell a story, can be viewed straight through at a single screening, and are ones that people actually enjoy watching.
That definition disqualifies things like Erika Magnusson and Daniel Andersson’s real-time documentary Logistic (35 days, 17 hours), which tracks an electronic gadget from its point of sale in Sweden back to its manufacturer in China.
Consider, for example, half of the 2024 roster of Best Picture nominees:
- The Holdovers – 133 minutes
- Poor Things – 142 minutes
- Anatomy of a Fall – 152 minutes
- Oppenheimer – 181 minutes
- Killers of the Flower Moon – 206 minutes
Or some of the top contenders for this year’s award:
- Complete Unknown – 140 minutes
- The Substance – 141 minutes
- Wicked – 160 minutes
- Dune: Part Two – 166 minutes
- The Brutalist – 215 minutes
“Long” is Subjective
One of the remarkable things about the film-going experience is how some long films seem to fly by while others feel interminable. Perhaps my first realization of this was back in 1962 when I caught both Lawrence of Arabia (222 minutes) and How the West Was Won (164 minutes) in theatres. Even as a kid, I was swept away by Lawrence. West, however, seemed to go on for days.
More recently, I thoroughly enjoyed Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman (209 minutes), though perhaps not as much as critic Jeff Snide who wrote in Collider that he’d willingly “watch a 10-hour cut of The Irishman, so long as there was a well-timed intermission and my parking was validated.”
What do you think?
I’m interested in hearing about the longest narrative features people have watched and enjoyed.
Share the upper limit of your est cinema experience by posting a comment or reaching out via the social media buttons below. I’ll try sharing highlights of the feedback I receive in a future post.
Until then, as Siskel and Ebert used to say, “Save me an aisle seat.”
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