The mad joys of listmaking

When you're a features writer, you end up having to make up lists. Of greatest this and worst that. Of gangster movies. Of soundtracks. Of cricketers. Of Michael Schumacher's finest overtaking maneuvers. Of the scariest films ever. Of whatever in the world the editor whimsically wants to see a list of. Of whatever harebrained idea comes to you at three in the morning.

Some lists, of course, are harder than others. This week, I'm going to vainly attempt a weak defense of this one series of lists -- on the greatest English-language films of all time, covering the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s and the, um, 00s -- I did recently that proved to be a truly gruelling task, and brought me much argumentative e-mail.

Yet the point of this piece isn't in that defense (which'll pop around much later) or grumbling about how difficult listmaking can be; it's about how irresistibly addictive, how much goshdarned fun it is.

Have you read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity? The 1995 novel is a lark about a record-store owner with serious relationship woes, but what makes it special is its all-consuming obsession with Top-Five lists, lists of anything and everything. From 'Five best side-one track-one songs of all time' to 'Five bands or musicians that will have to be shot come the musical revolution,' store-owner Rob and employees Dick and Barry quibble and obsess over tiny nuances and niceties.

The fight is about details, sure, but -- and here's the crucial bit -- they are details that don't matter.

Fanboys love lists and I'm no exception, simply because its dashed enjoyable to pretend to be empirical about something that you can't possibly formulate like math. Film is a matter of opinion and there are millions of points of view on the same movies, and none is less valid than the other. You like it, sat through it, worship it, hate it -- and we could all be arguing about the same movie. And we'd all be right.

The fun, of course, lies in the debate. In the pointless attempts at defining if the Goldfinger 'painted-gold' scene rates higher than the catfight in From Russia With Love. If Amitabh's drunken slurring in Satte Pe Satta beats his cockroach rant in Hum. And so on and so forth. It's all madness and inane and can't possibly come down to numbers and rankings, no matter how many critics think so. (For the record, about these two: 'yes, it does,' and 'no way,' respectively.)

Thing is, in trying to decide who scores higher than who and which scene is better than what and so on, you end up looking at the subjects a lot closer. You watch/hear/read and compare (mostly unfairly) but you willingly immerse yourself in the subjects of your list, trying to get closer and closer as you decide whether #8 really deserves to be a step higher than #9.

Fanboys spend as much time arguing in blissful futility about fantasy lists, about what actors should play what characters and what movie sequels should be made -- as if any one of us -- or, for that matter, editorial-roomful of people -- has the right to use that 'should.' Hah. Yet we do it because it's tremendous fun to pretend, and you're never too old to playact.

So then, these English-language movies, and the hardest lists I've ever had to make. (Actually, strike that. I once had to define The Ten Best Indian Movies Ever, and it was exasperating to the hilt. I tried and prefaced my list with a comment on inadequate subtitling and sticking to what I know best, but who reads the intro when the list is just two inches below that?)