Epic Films for a Long Night

Every few years someone makes an argument for a new film as the greatest epic ever made. The argument collapses. David Lean's 1962 film remains the reference point not because of nostalgia but because of precision: the way it earns each large emotion through accumulation of small, exact details. The four-hour runtime is not a challenge to the viewer. It is a form of respect. Lean believed you could hold an audience if you gave them something real to look at in every frame. He was right, and nobody since has matched it.

People talk about The Sopranos and The Wire as the twin peaks of prestige television, and both deserve the praise. But Deadwood, which ran for three seasons and was cancelled before its conclusion, contains writing at a level neither show touches. David Milch constructed a world where every character speaks with Shakespearean density and nobody sounds like a period-piece costume. The 2019 film, whatever its compromises, gives the story a landing. Watch all of it. The cancellation was a cultural loss; the completion, however partial, is a gift.

The Godfather built the template: a man's ambition consuming everything around him, told with operatic patience. Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film does the same work but strips out every last scrap of warmth. Daniel Plainview is not sympathetic the way Michael Corleone is sympathetic. He is simply unstoppable, and Anderson never blinks. That choice makes the film harder and, in the end, more accurate. It is the film that best describes the country it was made in, and watching it is not a comfortable experience. That is precisely why it belongs here.

Larry McMurtry wrote Lonesome Dove as a response to the mythology of the American West, not a celebration of it. What emerges is something that does what the best long films do: it makes you love characters who are going to be taken from you, and then it takes them. The 1989 miniseries adaptation is outstanding, which means this story works across both media. Start with the book. The miniseries is the reward.