92 minutes is the 'ideal' film length? What nonsense

It, however, makes sense why the cut-off point for many is 92 minutes. For decades, narrative film was stuck on a three-act structure, with beginning, middle, and end story beats neatly fitting within an hour and a half runtime. This has conditioned audience expectations, boxing film into a linear three acts that pulls more from theatrical convention than a cinematic one.

Is there a correct length for a film? No, a film’s length should depend on its artistic needs. But that’s just not the commercial reality, with film length being a question of maximising business before it becomes a question of artistic consideration.

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How to entice people off their couches when the elaborate confines of modern home entertainment are so entrenched in our viewing habits? Cue the advent of ‘event cinema’, where a film becomes more than a viewing experience and becomes a showcase event, where the fear of missing out and the fear of falling outside the discourse propels ticket sales. It’s hard to generate this sense of grandiosity and urgency with a lean 90 minute runtime, so the scope is expanded. Many of the most profitable films in recent years have stretched past the 2.5 hours benchmark, from expensive Marvel superhero fare to the watercooler exchange of a film like Oppenheimer.

Another strategy in the studio pockets lies in the lucrative youth demographic, where disposable income and lack of weekend plans remain a reliable moneymaker. For films targeting the supposedly low attention span of the newer generations, 90 minutes is more than ideal. Yet this assumption, presumably born out of focus groups and stereotyping decision-makers, doesn’t always gel with an authentic audience response. It was young filmgoers who showed enthusiasm and support for more emotionally nuanced and deliberated films like Call Me by Your Name and Everything Everywhere All at Once, breaking their success to a wider audience. Both of those examples come closer to 2.5 hours than the desirable 90 minutes.

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Then there is our subjective perception of time as we experience a film. The number of stated minutes is largely irrelevant when inside the experience. Some films with a lean runtime stumble to the end, making the experience much akin to watching the hands of a clock. Long films can float by, as engrossing and as masterfully paced as they might be.

Some films use our perception of time in aid of its meaning. As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, the nearly five hour video collage from experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas, attempts to reconstruct the filmmaker’s life through 30 years of home videos. The challenge is not how long we can sit and view someone else’s home videos, but rather how we can temper our patience in line with the film. Depicted are the intimate and real captured memories of the filmmaker’s life, a look into existence without the artificial constructs of narrative editing or pacing. It unveils a deeper connection with those real-time unravelling small moments, distanced from the manipulation and guiding hand of cinematic trickery.

Still from As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (Image: Canyon Cinema)
Mekas’ film length clearly fits the brief for artistic need. Artistic need, however, is hardly a consideration outside of the arthouse film circles that Mekas’ work circulates in, with an approved length being a prerequisite for most director-studio contracts. Most often, the studio receives the power to decide how long a final cut will be, with only those figures with gravitas like Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino able to throw their weight around and demand longer runtimes to fit their needs.

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Judging film on an arbitrary length is a severely limited position, based on the rules of commerce and not art. By accepting such narratives as “2.5 hours is too long”, we end up playing into commercial conditioning from a century of studio traditions. Film is an art, not a focus group task that can determine what the true ‘ideal’ length is.

Most culture we’re presented with has been cycled through endless profit tweaking decisions, watered down into a broadly accessible product that can be sold. Reducing film with these broad strokes only ever makes it trickier to escape the claustrophobic, uncreative box that studios have intentionally constructed throughout the years. Perhaps we should rethink such silly preconceptions, or lest we encourage the sad world of art by committee.