12 11.8.
Above and opening page: Screen grabs from Twitter.Screenland
Photo illustration by Najeebah Al-Ghadbanof history. We are so clearly living
through the worst chapters of a civics
textbook. Even as we suff er, we know
that our hyperventilations and break-
downs will be archived and studied by
some patient people in a saner future.
And so we feel displaced. We have
become living fossils, ancient even to
ourselves. Still, somehow, there is so
much fresh pain.
Over the last month, as a coping mech-
anism, I have been watching the same
viral video over and over and over. It is
not a campaign ad or a supercut of tri-
umphant congressional zingers. In fact,
it is the opposite: a brief clip of old-timey
French people pelting one another with
snowballs. This is my favorite fi lm of 2020
— a tiny masterpiece that perfectly distills
not only our current mayhem but also,
more profoundly, our baff ling displace-
ment in time.
The footage was captured in Lyon, in
1897, by the Lumière brothers, who were
among the world’s fi rst fi lmmakers. It was
originally black and white, of course, and
herky-jerky because of the low frame rate.
But this snowball fi ght has recently been
colorized and smoothed, and the result
is shockingly modern.The video shows 52 seconds of joyful
carnage: a gaggle of antiquated French
people hucking compacted snow at one
another’s faces with terrifying ferocity.
Although it’s hard to get an accurate head
count in the chaos, there is something
like 15 of them: men in suits and hats and
women in long puff y sleeves, their skirts
protected by aprons. The combatants start
on either side of a stately tree-lined street,
but soon they end up all scrambled togeth-
er. It’s like one of those big battle scenes at
the end of a superhero movie — a grace-
fully choreographed free-for-all, a ballet
of annihilation. Fighters swivel and dodgeThis is my
favorite fi lm
of 2020 — a tiny
masterpiece
that perfectly
captures
our current
mayhem.