Toni Erdmann and The Longest Foreign Nominees
Tuesday, January 31, 2017 at 6:40PM By Dancin Dan
If you've heard one thing about Germany's Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee Toni Erdmann, other than how great it is (and you can add me to the chorus of voices showering it with praise), it's probably been that Maren Ade's shaggy-dog comedy is LONG. So, trivia hound that I am, I was naturally curious to see just how long it was in the grand scheme of Oscar.
Toni Erdmann has either the 16th or 17th longest running time of all the films nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. That confusion comes from the weirdness of different versions of films and which ones the Academy actually saw when voting...
In some cases, it doesn't really matter, as with the foreign mini-series that were trimmed for theatrical release and are still significantly longer than most of the other nominees. The "problem film" here is Yugoslavia's The Battle of Neretva from 1975, which was 175 minutes long in original release, but was apparently trimmed by US distributors to 105 minutes. Which one of these versions was actually submitted to the Academy, I don't know.
But either way, AMPAS is clearly not averse to long sits, even if length itself doesn't guarantee anything. The longest film nominated has only won fifteen times, and if Toni Erdmann wins, it would be the third longest Best Foreign Language Film winner, behind the Soviet Union's mammoth War and Peace and Sweden's Fanny and Alexander. The twenty longest Foreign Film nominees are as follows:
4 hours plus
1. War and Peace (Soviet Union, 431 minutes originally, cut to 371 in the US)
2. The Deluge (Poland, 315 minutes)
3. Nights and Days (Poland, 251 minutes)
3 hours plus
4. The Brothers Karamazov (Soviet Union, 232 minutes)
5. Lagaan (India, 224 minutes)
6. The New Land (Sweden, 204 minutes)
7. The Emigrants (Sweden, 191 minutes)
8. The Dawns Here Are Quiet (Soviet Union, 188 minutes)
= Fanny and Alexander (Sweden, 188 minutes)
10. White Bim Black Ear (Soviet Union, 183 minutes)
11. Kwaidan (Japan, 182 minutes)
12. The Promised Land (Poland, 180 minutes)
two½ hours plus
13. Pharaoh (Poland, 175 minutes)
= Camille Claudel (France, 175 minutes)
= The Battle of Neretva (Yugoslavia, 175 minutes, cut to 105 minutes in the US)
16. Mother India (India, 172 minutes)
17. The Road a Year Long (Yugoslavia, 162 minutes)
= Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior) (Japan, 162 minutes)
= Toni Erdmann (Germany, 162 minutes)
20. Indochine (France, 159 minutes)
= 12 (Russia, 159 minutes)
As you might have noticed, the Soviet Union tends to have long nominees. On average, their nominees are the longest of any country: The average length of a nominated film from the Soviet Union is just over 185 minutes long. However, if you combine the Soviet Union's nominated films with those of the current Russia, that average drops to almost 145 minutes, putting it behind India, whose nominated films have an average length of almost 170 minutes, and just ahead of third place Poland (144.5 minute average).
Interestingly enough, Toni Erdmann is an outlier in this top twenty in a pretty significant way: It's entirely contemporary in setting. Of the rest of them, the only ones not completely set in the past were: White Bim Black Ear, Mother India, and 12 (and possibly The Road a Year Long, which I can't find enough information on). All the rest were historical dramas, many adapted from a novel.
What's your favorite "long sit" among the Foreign Film nominees?
Reader Comments (20)
I actually don't understand why Toni Erdmann has to be so long. It diminishes some of its strongest moments.
I have to agree.
Wait...ugh. I am seeing this this weekend, and sitting through a three hour movie is only something I'm willing to do if Kate Winslet is hanging off the bow of a ship or Don Corleone is making offers he can't refuse Why so long?!?
It didn't feel that long to me and I loathe long movies.
Indochine is so watchable.
Fanny and Alexander is the only one I've seen on this list... if my memory serves me correctly ithe 188 min version distributed in the US (the version I saw... and loved!) is only about half of the original "minii-series" version.
I feel like I've been watching the Toni Erdmann trailer for 6 months... and it's still a few weeks from release here in Austin. The trailer does not entice me to give the 3 hours running time the benefit of the doubt.
Still movie of the year for me.
I did find it a tad overlong - not in the 'difficult sit' sense (it isn't at all) but in the 'we reached a perfect ending 10 minutes ago, I love hanging out with these characters but why exactly is this film still going?' sense.
But I think I may have missed some emotional significance with regards to the ending.
So I guess I'll just have to watch the whole movie again. To which I say yaaaaaaaaay!!
I was perfectly fine with Toni Erdmann's length. Wonderful, wonderful film. I cried at least twice.
Wonder why they cut down War and Peace in America. You'd think that anyone willing to show up for a six hour movie isn't going to be scared off by one more hour.
I thought Toni Erdmann could have been shorter. But I still loved it.
Fanny and Alexander is one of the finest films ever made.
Never felt the length of "Toni Erdmann." Then again, 2 hrs 42 mins (credits included) isn't really *that* long in the scheme of things.
Fanny and Alexander, hands down.
Also, in the back of my head I was absolutley convinced that Bertolucci's 1900, which clocks in at four hours and contains one of Donald Sutherland's finest performances, was a foreign film nominee (possibly a winner even), as well. Turns out I was wrong.
I think it helps TONI ERDMANN that it's not always working at being a gut-busting comedy so there's less chance for it to feel like "this stuff isn't funny, why is this movie so long" like I usually do with Judd Apatow movies, for instance. For stretches it's just happy being casual and observational and maybe a giggle or two, and then there are stretches where it's actively making the audience laugh and succeeding.
You have forgotten about "The Deluge" (1974) from Poland which has 316 min. so should be on the 2nd place.
"The Deluge" from Poland was nominated just one year before "Nights and Days" and it is 316 mins. long (a fair running time, actually, considering the novel it's based on is longer than "Long of the Rings" and packed with action).
*two years before "Nigts and Days", with "The Promised Land" inbetween.
They all seem shorter than Silence did this year...
I love this kind of trivia. Thanks!
India would have long nominees if their movies were nominated more often than once in a blue moon. That said Lagaan was surprisingly good. I especially liked the way the climactic cricket match was filmed. It took up a good chunk of the 224-minute running time but it was still gripping even it was obvious who was going to win.
And I love how people are complaining about Toni Erdmann is so long when this is the year War and Peace's 50 year record for longest Oscar nominated film fell (to OJ Made in America)
Ajnrules, but that's because length doesn't matter when you're talking about TV ;-)