Buckley’s Mix

Best Conservative Films

Posted February 11, 2009, 20:02 ET Comments Off

NRO is offering up a list of best conservative films. For the most part I didn’t think the films they list very good, nor did I think them especially conservative. Doubtless I am the one who doesn’t understand conservatism, but here is a counterlist of ten other films:

Jules et Jim. “The promised land was in view. And the promised land disappeared.” Perhaps the best movie of all times. A film about lost illusions is necessarily conservative. But what is the value of a life without illusions?

Ma Nuit chez Maud. A Jansenist film about self-deception. In my kind of conservatism, political and moral wisdom begins with the recognition of self-deception.

Au hazard Balthazar. More Jansenism. Don’t expect Nirvana in this world.

Chariots of Fire. Ken Wales wants to do a sequel: Eric Liddell in China…

Pasolini’s The Gospel according to St. Matthew. Harold Nicolson saw it as a mau-mau version of the gospels. But it’s the best religious film ever made. It used to play every Easter on televison in Canada, but one never sees it in the United States. Too Catholic? Too religious?

Z. Pronounced Zed where I come from. One man takes on a Fascist state.

The Sorrow and the Pity. The collaborators were ordinary people.

Stagecoach. Fresh Starts. The theology of the body. The most romantic movie ever made. The most anti-romantic movie ever made.

24. A TV series, but what’s your point? The hero serves a cause greater than himself, even as it betrays him. Joel Surnow is the Dickens of our time, a Dickens without the repellant sentimentality. He sent me three seasons of 24 on DVD with a note, “pace yourself, Frank.”

House. Another TV series, the best ever created by a Canadian corporate lawyer. Genius has its privileges. As for Wilson, Montrealers are different…

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