I’m used to Paglia writing things I disagree with, but this is boneheaded to the extreme.
On the culture front, fabled film directors Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni dying on the same day was certainly a cold douche for my narcissistic generation of the 1960s. We who revered those great artists, we who sat stunned and spellbound before their masterpieces — what have we achieved? Aside from Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, is there a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” or “Persona”? Perhaps only George Lucas’ multilayered, six-film “Star Wars” epic can genuinely claim classic status, and it descends not from Bergman or Antonioni but from Stanley Kubrick and his pop antecedents in Hollywood science fiction.
If by “multi-layered” she means “multiple layers of poo, each new layer stinkier than the last” well yes.
And to answer her question: The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Mulholland Dr., Rosetta and/or The Son, A Time to Live and a Time to Die, The Wind Will Carry Us, Nostalghia, etc.
Jumping Kee-rist, that’s a stupid rhetorical question.