Please Stop Clapping
This standing ovation stuff is getting ridiculous.
When I was in high school, we used to play this Wikipedia game in which you had to get from one page to another in as few turns as possible. It was pretty simple, but we were also a bunch of teenage boys, so we were idiots. Someone would send you to a random page and then you’d have to find a way to get to usually something NSFW.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’ve clicked on a lot of Wikipedia pages in my day and many of them are shockingly pointless. Just now, I did a random Wiki search and ended up on the Chevrolet Series D automobile, inactive Brazilian football team Clube Atlético Pirassununguense and plant Myrceugenia campestris.
And yet, this all pales in comparison to the most pointless of pages: List of Cannes Film Festival records. Now, I love a film festival, but this page mostly consists of which movies had the longest standing ovations after their premiere.
2006’s Pan's Labyrinth leads the charge at 22 minutes. Mel Gibson’s puppet drama The Beaver had a full 10 minutes and Inside Llewyn Davis had a fleeting five minutes.
Do you know how long a five-minute standing ovation is? It’s really, really long.
22 minutes is basically a full 30 Rock episode. Why are people clapping for that much time? We must put a stop to this.
Not only has this become a film-festival sin; it’s become something that can’t stop being reported on by reputable outlets. This doesn’t help the movies which immediately get compared to one another and belittled for “shorter” amount of applause … a ridiculous thing to happen.
I mean, I get it. This is a way to compare different things that fans are excited about and can’t see. It also creates a competition, which always gets views. But, this entire mishegas feels like something created for and sustained by idiots.
Applause means nothing. Also, it rarely has anything to do with the movies but more about the audience and hobnobbers in the room or if the stars/director have a certain amount of buzz.
I also can’t think of anything worse than being one of the actors in the movie and having to stand there and fake humility while a bunch of randoms clap for you for 10-20 minutes. That could just as easily be a torture tactic or ingenious way for a teacher to embarrass a misbehaving student.
I’ve been a witness to many theaters clapping after a movie and I need to say the following: What are you guys doing? Who are you clapping for? There’s no one from that movie that’s here. You might as well record that clap, put that audio in a bottle and throw it into the ocean.
It feels performative to be like, “I need everyone to know that I enjoyed this.” Just quietly slink out of the theater with your friends and look at one another until someone breaks the ice and says something incriminating. You know, like the rest of us. There are very few things funnier than loving or hating a movie and discovering that you disagree with everyone else and need to defend yourself against the horde.
This standing ovation stuff has become a constant when it comes to film festivals. If you want to clap for a few seconds to show your appreciation, that’s fine. I’ll allow it. 10 minutes of clapping? Everyone involved should be thrown in jail.
Joaquin Phoenix has had a rough time as of late—ruining Todd Haynes’ new movie, starring in Joker 2—but even he understands how dumb this entire charade of standing ovations can be. Phoenix left early at the Venice Joker: Folie à Deux premiere while the audience was still clapping like trained seals. When an Oscar-winning actor frequently in the spotlight has had enough of your public adulation, something must be wrong.
I have a few film festivals on the horizon (TIFF & NYFF) and I hope we can all figure this out before the movies start/end. Please don’t make me stand there for 18 minutes clapping and checking my (imaginary) watch. I have movies to get to and food to eat and Joker 2 to not watch.