The five most pretentious movies ever made
There are some films so pretentious that it they leave your face in a permanent grimace as you watch them, wanting to crawl into your skin and never watch a film again. Some directors believe their work to be so profound despite not saying anything at all and being incredibly superficial, with egos that cloud their judgement and allow them to elevate the importance of every thought that comes into their head.
Many films lovers will attach the label of pretentiousness to film from the French New Wave era, with people expressing frustration at the choppy editing style of Pierrot Le Fou and loose narrative style of Jules et Jim, or some people who consider anything they don’t understand as being pretentiousness, simply because they can’t wrap their head around it.
Whether it be the work of Jean-Luc Godard or Christopher Nolan, there are many filmmakers who have been lauded with this criticism, leading to recent debates about what this actually means after people on the internet exclaimed that Jacob Elordi is pretentious for having a book in his back pocket.
However, the world directly translates to something that ‘attempts to impress by implying greater importance than is worth’, and today, we will be discussing the top five movies that do exactly that.
The five most pretentious movies ever made
Malcolm and Marie (Sam Levinson, 2021)
There are few directors I find as frustrating as Sam Levinson, with an ego the same size of the chip on his shoulder that makes him vocalise ideas that belong in the trash. Unfortunately, despite how impressive Zendaya is, Malcolm and Marie is one of those films and is about as pretentious and problematic as humanly possible.
During lockdown, the director was itching to make something and so decided to word vomit onto a page and then shoot it, making an ‘art film’ about a couple called Malcolm and Marie, who have an all-night argument after he forgets to thank her during an acceptance speech for his film. While the premise sounds like it could have potential, Levinson destroys any chance at depth by using the characters to voice his own bitter feelings towards the film industry, making himself out to be some poor artist that is the target of a hate crime because he received a famously bad review.
Even worse than this, Levinson uncomfortably voices his anger over film critics through a Black actor and attempts to make it appear less self-indulgent and more profound by adding a racial element to justify the whiney monologue, with Malcolm complaining about ‘the white lady from the LA Times’, which is incredibly embarrassing given that it was written by a white and extremely privileged director whose entire career was built on nepotism.
As well as this, Levinson cannot fathom a woman outside of a sexual context, and Zendaya’s character becomes increasingly naked throughout the film, with her body essentially becoming set dressing to the film as Malcolm’s character is used as a megaphone to voice Levinson’s childish tantrums. It is insufferable, all while pretending to be a nuanced and deep exploration of modern love and the creative struggle. Yawn.
Blink Twice (Zoe Kravtiz, 2024)
As Kravitz’s directorial debut, intrigue around how her experience in front of the camera would translate to the other side was rife. However, most were extremely disappointed after watching her Get Out rip-off about sexual assault, in which the director is more interested in being perceived as clever instead of writing anything with nuance.
The film is about a schmoozy millionaire who brings a group of people to his private island for a party holiday, but the women slowly begin to discover a more sinister motivation behind the celebrations. It ends up being vaguely about rape culture but is frustratingly incapable of tackling such delicate subject matter in any meaningful way and instead chooses to make jokes about the subject and turn it into a poppy #girlboss movie that makes light of the severity of this issue.
In my mind, it is another film within the Hollywood graveyard that attempts to explore a controversial subject matter for the sake of lip service and clout, with a shallow ending that implies we can all become empowered by staying with our abusers for the sake of some money and nice jewellery. It is a hollow and self-congratulatory piece of work in which you can tell how smug Kravitz is for making such a ‘daring and subversive film’ and exposing everything wrong in the world with her quote ‘satirical’ story funded by Warner Brothers. Let’s stop using important issues as a backdrop to silly stories in an attempt to add weight. It’s insulting and so beyond damaging.
Song to Song (Terrence Malick, 2017)
I wish I understood what Terrence Malick was going for with this one, but Song to Song is a film that has continued to baffle me and was perhaps the worst introduction to his work. Described as a modern love story in Austin, it follows two couples and… I honestly couldn’t tell you what happens. Most of the film is just really nice interior design inspiration as the couples fight and kiss in really nice houses.
It has a very disjointed structure that doesn’t really follow a specific narrative and is more of a mood poem of lots of ‘evocative’ images that are there to make us ponder over the infinite wisdom of the filmmaker and the pains of everyday life, but I’ve found John Lewis Christmas adverts to be more emotive than this.
With a freeform approach that is defined as being experimental, I couldn’t help but think of those meaningless modern art exhibitions where someone throws a jelly bean on the floor and labels it as a provocative piece about the ‘precariousness of humanity’ and ends up selling for millions of pounds. Malick is the filmmaker equivalent of the jelly bean artists – great at tricking you into something profound is happening, all while nothing is happening besides putting together a collection of random people and things that are lit beautifully.
The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021)
Given how much I loved The Great Beauty, I was intrigued when Sorrentino’s 2021 film was announced, described as a personal story about the director’s adolescence. The film follows Fabietto, an Italian teenage boy whose life is plunged into chaos and uncertainty after a tragic accident. While it is easy to appreciate what Sorrentino was going for, the jarring structure and unmotivated narrative made it difficult to connect with a confused story that was littered with metaphors and images to help create weight.
It starts off strongly as the director focuses on, arguably, the strongest element of the film, which is the unique dynamic between Fabietto’s family, but this slowly dwindles away after a turning point in which the story tightens around the main character and his reaction to this event, which is far less interesting. It becomes messy and convoluted as he struggles to find meaning in his life. It may be part of the point, but it’s frustrating when it feels like even the director doesn’t know how to paint this in a concise way and connect the dots between each scene.
Sorrentino is attempting to have the self-awareness of Fellini in his autobiographical coming-of-age tale, all while it seems as though he doesn’t quite understand which parts of his life he wants to highlight and how he feels about these memories himself, all while painting them as being deeply profound.
Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
Do not trust anyone who genuinely enjoys the work of Roman Polanski, and Repulsion is no exception. The film’s title aptly summarises a swathe of feelings audiences have for the disgraced director. Things go a little war when Polanski, a filmmaker linked with a sexual assault on a minor, diects a movie about sexual assault. Frankly, its an insult.
Maybe some people can overlook his character and appreciate the technical achievements of the film, but perhaps we shouldn’t. Polanski is exploiting progressive subject matter and the charged feelings around this issue to further his career, even though his actions only demonstrate a complete lack of respect or care towards women. There is nothing nuanced about this film because the message could only be considered as profound if it were made by someone with lived experiences of what is being depicted on screen, and his behaviour in real life makes this entirely null and void. What nuanced takes could an abuser possibly have about the horrors of sexual assault and a woman’s experiences of this?
Not only this, but the fact that Catherine Deneuve’s definitive quality is that she is a virgin is so reductive and misogynistic, but given who it was directed by, this is the element I am least surprised be. I’d like to think that Polanski will eventually be punished for his crimes, but given that he was awarded the ‘Best Director’; prize at the César Award in 2020, it seems the film industry will prioritise his mediocre creative outputs over women in general, because after all, it is Hollywood.
