rose ฅ•ω•ฅ

The reality is that lots of these great films are actually broadly enjoyable. The reason they're considered great isn't because of elitism, some snobby ideal that they're hard to watch and therefore better, but because they're just extremely well made and stylized films. The black and white Swedish film? That describes a number of Ingmar Bergman films like The Seventh Seal. And The Seventh Seal is hilarious, even now. I honestly thought it was going to just be really serious and depressing but it's a life riot (when not being serious and depressing). There's a scene where a man is trading insults with his wife's lover, but he's not very smart so another man is whispering insults to him to use. It's about a knight that plays chess with death for a chance at living, but death is a cheating bastard that delivers one liners before he kills someone.

I know that a lot of people really only watch whatever is popular and recent, and that's fine, but I don't want people to miss out on truly great films because they think they'd be hard to watch. I did a showing of a silent film at work (One Week by Buster Keaton) and everyone was enthralled by the stunt work on display. It's over 100 years old and it still holds up because there's no expiration date on quality.

If you are looking to engage with older films though, skip Tarkovsky for now. Stalker and Solaris are two incredible films (Stalker is probably top ten for me), but those are absolutely the cliche of some slow, hard to follow "true art is incomprehensible" film. Terrence Malick as well. Excellent filmmaker, but watching The Tree of Life is work. Kurosawa and Hitchcock are some of my favorite directors and every movie they make is straightforward and thrilling. High and Low is the most incredible police procedural I've seen in my life, and Psycho is still a tense, thrilling experience.