Can a film be indisputably great? Is it outlandish to find fault with “Vertigo”? Or "Citizen Kane?" I don’t think so.
I've been trying to think of one film that everyone reading here might agree is absolutely great. ‘Kane,’ and ‘Vertigo,’ are two films that have topped critics poll over the years. Many years ago, I attended film school classes where both films had students confess they didn’t get the hype surrounding them.
Don’t even get me started on ‘Jeanne Dielman,’ which topped the Sight and Sound poll and garnered backlash in some circles. The thought of a three-hour movie about a woman doing housework being the greatest film ever made had some people in a fury. ‘Dielman’ is a great, radical movie, but naming it the greatest one ever did it a major disservice.
There are also people who don’t get Kubrick. And Hitchcock. In fact, there are many ardent Hitchcock fans who believe "Vertigo” isn’t his best film. Far from it. I’ve met Hitchcock aficionados who shun at the idea that “Vertigo” is a masterpiece (it is).
"The Godfather," probably comes closest to a mass consensus. It’s at #2 on the ubiquitous IMDB top 250. "The Shawshank Redemption" is #1, but you’ll get plenty of critics who disapprove of ‘Shawshank,’ which wasn’t universally liked back in 1994.
Of course, if you are not a fan of “The Godfather" or ‘Shawshank,’ that’s fine. Who am I to say that you’re wrong. In fact, “The Godfather” has four rotten reviews to its name — one of which is from legendary film critic Andrew Sarris.
There isn’t any sort of validation that comes in liking or disliking art. The Tomatometer and Metacritic are the examples movie fans cite as any sort of proof that their taste aligns with the consensus — but it’s all too easy and mundane to do that.
Just because you "liked" a film doesn’t mean others must follow suit. For example, I received hate mail when I put “Joker” on my 2019 top ten. It‘s just part of the outrage machine that comes in putting your opinion of a movie out there, especially one as polarizing as that one.
Time tends to heal this. Imagine being the film critic who actually had something positive to say about Kubrick’s “The Shining” back in 1980. It was panned back in the day, even received Razzie noms for its director. There was no tomatometer in the ‘80s, but imagine there was, “The Shining would have fared terribly.
So, is “The Godfather” indisputably great? It would surely be in my all-time top 10, but something tells me a reader or two will comment that it’s not. And all the better for it.