The time is up for long films

‘Programme starts at 3.45, so the film will start at 4.15, and it’s two hours and 43 minutes long, so we’d be out just before 7 p.m.’

This is the No Time to Die calculation, and I think many of us are doing it and wondering: ‘Can I face it?’ A dark afternoon spent in a state of total surrender to the longueurs imposed on us by a self-indulgent director? Thirsty from too much popcorn, leg muscles seizing up, not allowed to look at your phone, pressure on the bladder, Daniel Craig never smiling and the end nowhere near in sight?

After a year and a half of becoming accustomed to the daily hour-long episode of the Netflix or Amazon Prime drama we’re addicted to — just perfect between supper and bedtime — I think we’ve lost our taste for things being too long, especially when you’re part of a captive audience. Two hours and 40 minutes for a film now seems as out of date and old-fashioned as those four-hour Victorian Proms that contained at least two overtures, two concertos, five sea shanties and a Bruckner symphony: they were designed in the olden days when people had more time and more patience.

Two hours and 40 minutes for a film now seems as out of date as those four-hour Victorian Proms

What we long for now in our spectacle creators is the crucial quality of time empathy. Time empathy means really imagining what it’s like to be watching or listening to one’s output in a captive-audience situation. It means being self-disciplined enough to imagine that not everyone will be enjoying it. Some might even be longing for it to end. Consider those ones, please.