I was so sad to hear of the death of celebrated filmmaker William "Billy" Friedkin, a director who made one of my favorite films of all time, and who was much admired by my late husband, Roger. I send the deepest condolences to his wife, Sherry Lansing, and their family. I knew both Billy and Sherry as lovely, decent people who, in addition to their talent in the film world, were also philanthropic and reached out to lend a hand in various charitable endeavors.
Personally, I am so grateful to Billy (and Sherry) for being so helpful when Roger was sick, helping to lift Roger's spirits when he was in the hospital. And helping to lift mine after his death. Even though they both went on to make names for themselves in Hollywood, they both retained those kind Midwestern (Chicago) values. He died yesterday, August 7th, at the age of 87.
I am on the board of the LA Opera, and the President and CEO, Christopher Koelsch, notified us of the quite extensive opera background of Friedkin's that I was not aware of. "Billy had a profound impact on the LAO community with his extraordinarily insightful and extremely popular productions of Bluebeard's Castle/Gianni Schicchi (2002), Ariadne auf Naxos (2004) and Il Tabarro/Suor Angelica (2008)," he wrote. "He also won acclaim for productions around the world, including Wozzeck, The Makropoulos Case and Rigoletto in Florence, Salome in Munich, and Aida in Turin."
Billy's talents extended far and wide, even saving someone from death row. Interestingly, he told Donald Liebenson, one of our Contributors at Rogerebert.com, that when he made his first film, 1962's "The People vs. Paul Crump," “I had the hope, but not the certainty, that it would help Crump in some way and that it would in some way be the beginning of an education for me in how to make a film.” But his actions led to Paul Crump being taken off of death row.
Roger saw the potential in Friedkin's work early on, praising his 1968 film, "The Night They Raided Minsky's," writing, "It avoids the phony glamour and romanticism that the movies usually use to smother burlesque (as in 'Gypsy') and it really seems to understand this most-American art form." Roger also favored Friedkin's 1969 adaptation of Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party," claiming that "it's impossible to imagine a better film of Pinter's play than this sensitive, disturbing version."
Yet it was in 1971's "The French Connection" where Friedkin's genius was on full display, particularly in its landmark car chase sequence. "In Friedkin's chase, the cop has to weave through city traffic at 70 m.p.h. to keep up with a train that has a clear track: The odds are off-balance," marveled Roger in his four-star review. "And when the train's motorman dies and the train is without a driver, the chase gets even spookier: A man is matched against a machine that cannot understand risk or fear. This makes the chase psychologically more scary, in addition to everything it has going for it visually." The film went on to win five Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.
Friedkin's next picture, 1973's "The Exorcist," is on my Top Ten List of Movies. It is also the one for which he is most widely remembered, in part because it continues to frighten audiences a half-century after its release. "If movies are, among other things, opportunities for escapism, then 'The Exorcist' is one of the most powerful ever made," Roger wrote in his four-star review. "Our objections, our questions, occur in an intellectual context after the movie has ended. During the movie there are no reservations, but only experiences. We feel shock, horror, nausea, fear, and some small measure of dogged hope." In 1979's "The Brink's Job," Roger wrote in his three-star review that Friedkin affirmed his versatility by exhibiting "a light touch, an ability to orchestrate rich human humor with a bunch of characters who look like they were born to stand in a police lineup."
Roger said that Friedkin crafted another of the all-time great chase sequences in 1985's "To Live and Die in L.A." "I don't know how Friedkin choreographed this scene, and I don't want to know," Roger wrote in his four-star review. "It probably took a lot of money and a lot of drivers. All I know is that there are high-angle shots of the chase during which you can look a long way ahead and see hundreds of cars across four lanes, all heading for the escape car, which is aimed at them, full speed. It is an amazing sequence.
1992's "Rampage" offered a different angle on the death penalty debate, as detailed in Roger's three-star review: "Friedkin does not quite say so in as many words, but his message is clear: Those who commit heinous crimes should pay for them, sane or insane." 1994's "Blue Chips" also received thumbs up from Roger, who wrote, "What Friedkin brings to the story is a tone that feels completely accurate; the movie is a morality play, told in the realistic, sometimes cynical terms of modern high-pressure college sports."
For 2003's "The Hunted," Roger found that the director had stretched his mastery of the chase sequence to feature-length. "Here the whole movie is a chase, sometimes at a crawl, as when Hallam drives a stolen car directly into a traffic jam," he wrote in his three-and-a-half star review. "What makes the movie fresh is that it doesn't stand back and regard its pursuit as an exercise, but stays very close to the characters and focuses on the actual physical reality of their experience"
Roger awarded another three and a half stars to Friedkin's 2007 adaptation of Tracy Letts' hit play, "Bug," which he hailed as "a claustrophobic masterpiece" and a "return to form" for the director. The final Friedkin film reviewed by Roger was another Letts adaptation, 2012's "Killer Joe," which he praised in his three-star review as "one hell of a movie. It left me speechless. I can't say I loved it. I can't say I hated it. It is expertly directed, flawlessly cast and written with merciless black humor."
After Roger passed away in 2013, Billy Friedkin paid tribute to him at the inaugural Chicago Critics Film Festival by quoting a verse from Dylan Thomas' poem, "And Death Shall Have No Dominion," which I am now quoting today in the director's honor... Billy, I hope you Rest in Bliss.
“And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men, naked, they shall be one
With the man in the wind, and the west moon;
Though they go mad
They shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea
They shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost
Love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.”
Read Scout Tafoya's tribute to William Friedkin here, and the tributes penned by various RogerEbert.com contributors here.
]]>With Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” releasing in theaters this week, we thought we’d look back at what Roger Ebert wrote about the films of this brilliant filmmaker before his passing. Roger was able to review seven films by Nolan between 2001 and 2012, giving all of them three stars or more. And since Roger’s passing, four more films have been reviewed by Matt Zoller Seitz or Brian Tallerico and awarded the same thumbs up rating. According to this site, Nolan has yet to miss. Below, you’ll find quotes from each of the reviews and links to read more that include information on how to watch these films online.
“Memento”
“The purpose of the movie is not for us to solve the murder of the wife ("I can't remember to forget you," he says of her). If we leave the theater not sure exactly what happened, that's fair enough. The movie is more like a poignant exercise, in which Leonard's residual code of honor pushes him through a fog of amnesia toward what he feels is his moral duty. The movie doesn't supply the usual payoff of a thriller (how can it?), but it's uncanny in evoking a state of mind. Maybe telling it backward is Nolan's way of forcing us to identify with the hero. Hey, we all just got here.”
“Insomnia”
“Pacino and Williams are very good together. Their scenes work because Pacino's character, in regarding Williams, is forced to look at a mirror of his own self-deception. The two faces are a study in contrasts. Pacino is lined, weary, dark circles under his eyes, his jaw slack with fatigue. Williams has the smooth, open face of a true believer, a man convinced of his own case.”
“This is at last the Batman movie I've been waiting for. The character resonates more deeply with me than the other comic superheroes, perhaps because when I discovered him as a child, he seemed darker and more grown-up than the cheerful Superman. He has secrets. As Alfred muses: "Strange injuries and a nonexistent social life. These things beg the question, what does Bruce Wayne do with his time?"”
“The pledge of Nolan's "The Prestige" is that the film, having been metaphorically sawed in two, will be restored; it fails when it cheats, as, for example, if the whole woman produced on the stage were not the same one so unfortunately cut in two. Other than that fundamental flaw, which leads to some impenetrable revelations toward the end, it's quite a movie -- atmospheric, obsessive, almost satanic.”
““Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.””
“The movies often seem to come from the recycling bin these days: Sequels, remakes, franchises. "Inception" does a difficult thing. It is wholly original, cut from new cloth, and yet structured with action movie basics so it feels like it makes more sense than (quite possibly) it does. I thought there was a hole in "Memento:" How does a man with short-term memory loss remember he has short-term memory loss? Maybe there's a hole in "Inception" too, but I can't find it. Christopher Nolan reinvented "Batman." This time he isn't reinventing anything. Yet few directors will attempt to recycle "Inception." I think when Nolan left the labyrinth, he threw away the map.”
“"The Dark Knight Rises" leaves the fanciful early days of the superhero genre far behind, and moves into a doom-shrouded, apocalyptic future that seems uncomfortably close to today's headlines. As urban terrorism and class warfare envelop Gotham and its infrastructure is ripped apart, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) emerges reluctantly from years of seclusion in Wayne Manor and faces a soulless villain as powerful as he is. The film begins slowly with a murky plot and too many new characters, but builds to a sensational climax.”
Note: The following reviews are not by Roger Ebert.
“The film's widescreen panoramas feature harsh interplanetary landscapes, shot in cruel Earth locales; some of the largest and most detailed starship miniatures ever built, and space sequences presented in scientifically accurate silence, a la "2001." But for all its high-tech glitz, "Interstellar" has a defiantly old-movie feeling. It's not afraid to switch, even lurch, between modes. At times, the movie's one-stop-shopping storytelling evokes the tough-tender spirit of a John Ford picture, or a Steven Spielberg film made in the spirit of a Ford picture: a movie that would rather try to be eight or nine things than just one.”
“Dunkirk”
“If somebody were to ask me if I liked this film, I would tell them no. I loathed parts of it and found other parts repetitious or half-baked. But, maybe paradoxically, I admired it throughout, and have been thinking about it constantly since I saw it. Even the aspects of "Dunkirk" that didn't sit right with me are all of a piece. This is a movie of vision and integrity made on an epic scale, a series of propositions dramatized with machines, bodies, seawater and fire. It deserves to be seen and argued about. They don't make them like this anymore. Never did, really.”
“Tenet”
“Viewer response to “Tenet” will come down to how much one engages with that momentum. I expect a surprising number of people will open the door and jump out of this moving race car (look, another palindrome!) before it crosses the finish line, exhausted by a story that doesn’t make sense even as it’s trying to explain itself to you. Others will embrace the filmmaking's energy, which starts with intensity and doesn’t let up much at all. The word I kept thinking of was one I used earlier in this review: “aggressive”—that may sound like high praise to Nolan fans looking for something other than a lazy, predictable blockbuster and harsh criticism to those who aren’t looking to be left weary by a self-serious sci-fi epic. In the spirit of a film about objects moving opposite ways in time in the same space, maybe both groups are right.”
"This review hasn't really delved much into the plot of the film or the real-world history that inspired it, not because it isn't important (of course it is) but because—as is always the case with Nolan—the main attraction is not the story, itself but how the filmmaker tells it. Nolan has been derided as less a dramatist than half showman, half mathematician, making bombastic, overcomplicated, but ultimately muddled and simplistic blockbusters that are as much puzzles as stories. But whether that characterization was ever entirely true (and I'm increasingly convinced that it never was) it seems beside the point when you see how thoughtfully and rewardingly it's been applied to a biography of a real person. It seems possible that "Oppenheimer" could retrospectively seem like a turning point in the director's filmography, when he takes all of the stylistic and technical practices that he'd been honing for the previous twenty years in intellectualized pulp blockbusters and turns them inward, using them to explore the innermost recesses of the mind and heart, not just to move human pieces around on a series of interlinked, multi-dimensional storytelling boards."
]]>Roger Ebert died ten years ago today. He was a friend and mentor to a lot of people. I might have described Roger as a friend and mentor even if I hadn’t ended up getting to know him, taking part in EbertFest at the invitation of Chaz Ebert, then becoming editor-in-chief of this site for a few years after his passing, because Roger was one of those rare writers who seemed to be talking not to some large, faceless audience, but to you alone.
Chaz asked everyone affiliated with the site to commemorate the occasion by writing on the theme of empathy. I thought back to figure out exactly when I began to associate “empathy” with Roger specifically, and realized that it was when I read his 2011 essay on Robert Bresson’s drama “Diary of a Country Priest,” nearly a quarter century after seeing it for the first time.
My first viewing was as a freshman film student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 1987. I was living at home with my mother and stepfather and commuting to and from campus on a bike. Before the classroom screening of Bresson’s film, the professor talked about Bresson’s “austere” style, to get us to think about the relationship between form and content. As a film production student, I was interested in that—and I was interested in the movie itself, although I found it tough to get into at first because it was slow and quiet and in French and I was 18. When I discovered that it was one of the primary inspirations for Paul Schrader’s “Taxi Driver” screenplay, I decided to watch it again, and afterward thought about the relationship between form and content a bit more. “Diary of a Country Priest” ended up on a mental list of films that I respected but didn’t love.
Decades later, I read Roger’s review of “Diary of a Country Priest,” and it was then that I began to love the movie.
The review begins, like so many of his pieces, by dropping you right into the film’s fictional world. He reimagines the movie in his memory. He does this without technical terminology, or even a recitation of basic factual information that you usually find in the first paragraph of a review, such as the title of the film, the director, the lead actors, the locale, the genre, and so on.
“The young priest only smiles once,” is how he starts–a typically terse, understatedly lyrical Roger Ebert opening. Then he continues: “It is on the day he leaves the cruel country town to catch a train and see a doctor. A passing motorcyclist gives him a lift to the station, and as he climbs on behind him we see a flash of the boy inside the sad man. It is a nice day, it's fun to race though the breeze, and he is leaving behind the village of Ambricourt.”
Right from the start, Roger tells you that this is a movie about a man whose identity is defined by a job and a place that doesn’t make him happy, and can’t breathe and feel joy until he gets away from it. This is a great way to pull the reader into a review, but most critics don’t do it. A lot of reviews write about characters as if they’re abstractions, or pawns on the chessboard of plot, rather than as representations of people who could exist, or metaphors for struggles we all have have in everyday life. Roger didn’t just write about the formal and narrative aspects of Bresson’s film and how they intertwine; he saw deeply into the main character, so deeply that he appears to have recognized himself in the priest, and did it in a way that moves me again whenever I re-read his writing.
But what made the piece lodge in my mind and reorient my perception of the movie was two sentences: “The locals gossip that he's a drunk, because of his diet, but we never see him drunk. Bresson often fills the frame with his face, passive, and the stare of his unfocused eyes.”
Roger was a recovering alcoholic. He talked about it in blog posts and in his memoir “Life Itself,” and it’s described in the same-titled Steve James documentary about Roger and Chaz. That’s why I’m moved thinking about Roger watching Bresson’s film and realizing, “Somehow, that person is me.” I was always surprised and then gratified whenever he put a piece of himself in his reviews, but especially when he wrote about alcoholism, because I was the child of alcoholics and did not realize or admit it until later in life. Roger didn’t, either. He’d been in recovery for a long time before he started to publicly discuss it. Bresson’s film is not a story about a guy who drinks too much, but part of the process of projecting yourself onto movies is seeing your own story there even if it’s not your story.
“He is thin and weak,” he writes, “he coughs up blood, he grows faint in the houses of parishioners, one late night he falls in the mud and cannot get up. It is a bleak winter. The landscape around his little church is barren. There is often no sign of life except for the distant, unfriendly barking of dogs.”
It’s a Bressonian review of a Bresson film, and as such, it can spark a different understanding of how films can communicate information, and how that can reflect the way people and works of art hide things—but not so carefully that we can’t see them if we generate what artists sometimes call “imaginative empathy,” and project ourselves onto a character, then look at the movie around them, and think about what’s there, and not there, and what it means.
Both my mother and my stepfather were alcoholics, of what’s often called the “high functioning” sort. Most of the people who dealt with them in everyday, workaday life didn’t think of them as alcoholics. They weren’t drinking cheap wine all the time because they had a stomach condition. They drank every day or night for a certain number of hours. They were productive citizens, as they say. They only occasionally had terrifying, endless screaming matches that escalated to violence, with my mom and my stepfather hitting each other and throwing things, and my stepfather knocking down doors she’d locked to keep him out, or putting his fist through drywall, or sometimes firing off guns at baseboards or at the ceiling to express his anger.
I didn’t tell very many of my college friends about what I was going through living at home in the house where I grew up, and when I did, I left out the worst of it, because it was so embarrassing and traumatizing. I don’t believe I recognized the two of them as being substance abusers with possible undiagnosed mental illness until I was much older. This is partly because they were professional musicians in the 1970s and ‘80s and there was a lot of drinking and drug use going on in that world, and a lot of other stuff that I’ll get into some other time. I had a warped idea of what “regular” life was like. I was in denial. And when I finally got out of that house, I was as relieved as the priest leaving Ambricourt.
Some of my friends later told me that even though I didn’t say much about that experience, they knew whatever was happening at my house was bad. Secrets were kept, by me and my brother, and also by my mother and stepfather. Certain things were not discussed. That’s not to say that people who knew us didn’t know about some things, or infer them. But they weren’t discussed. Something about the way Bresson defines the priest in his movie illuminates how people can see things even if they aren’t shown and commented upon. You can see what’s not there if you pay attention. The ellipses in the storytelling let you find yourself in it.
Roger helped me see the movie in a new, personal way, see past the things my film professor said were most important, by treating “Diary of a Country Priest” mainly as a story about an unhappy man with a complicated personality and a conflicted relationship to faith. For all of his knowledge of film history and style and theory, he correctly recognized that people watch films mainly for the stories and characters, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone who speaks to their own situation, whatever it may be.
He saw himself in the movie, and he helped me see my parents and myself in it as well.
]]>It's hard to believe that it's been ten years since Roger Ebert left us, but his legacy shines bright and his impact can still be felt in not just criticism but the art form he loved. Roger famously thought that film was an "empathy machine," a way to step into someone else's shoes or experience a perspective that the real world could never allow. We asked our contributors to pick a review or film that came to mind when they heard those words to reveal not only how right Roger was about the power of moviemaking but how his influence continues to thrive on this site and elsewhere every time that someone writes or reads about a movie. We have also republished most of these reviews today and you can link directly to them via the titles below. Enjoy. We miss you, Roger. And you are still with us every day.
One of the things I admired most about Roger was that, while he often had his biases around genre (and medium, as his takes on video games can attest), the right film could hit him in a magical, undeniable way. And so it went with Roger's review of one of the 21st century's most empathetic movies from Hollywood's most empathetic filmmakers, the Wachowskis: "Cloud Atlas." In spanning centuries and worlds and selves, the film is a three-hour opus about how, as Roger put it in his review, "all lives are connected by a thirst for freedom." Consequently, his review is less about the film itself than the experience of watching it, absorbing it—of letting a piece of art dig its way under your skin and illuminate new things about you. Rather than describe, Roger converses, constantly negotiating with the reader how much to reveal, chronicling his own journey from analytical overwhelm to the kind of intellectual freedom the film's characters spend so much time seeking: "On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters. What was important was that I set my mind free to play." More than awakening a viewer to empathize with a specific person, group of people, or issue, his review of "Cloud Atlas" shows him wrestling with his own understanding of the work, and what it wants to say about all of us. It's a movie about caring, reviewed by a man who cared about that movie in return, and wanted to share that care with those who trusted his counsel. -Clint Worthington
Empathy is easy if you already agree with the actions of another, while the feeling borders on the impossible if you think another’s actions are truly reprehensible. It’s far easier to boycott things you were already avoiding, or to accept censorship for that which you find offensive. To try and inhabit the humanity of someone that’s so far outside your own experience is the very mandate of being truly empathetic, pushing oneself to bend to the point of breaking in order to try and understand each decision they make or belief they hold because it is their truth, no matter how far it is from your own set of beliefs. I can’t think of a more stunning exemplar for the challenges and rewards of emphasizing, a film where we witness the catastrophic collision between madness and faith, than Lars Von Trier’s 1996 masterpiece "Breaking the Waves." As Roger wrote, this is an “emotionally and spiritually challenging” work, “hammering at conventional morality,” for “here we have a story that forces us to take sides, to ask what really is right and wrong in a universe that seems harsh and indifferent.” We are never indifferent to Bess’ situation, yet with the final peal even our own faith about the certitude of our responses is upended. This is not a journey on calm waters—as Roger suggests, we are “forced” to confront our expectations—and what better test of empathy is there than to be open to being offended, and then questioning our own discomfort, dismay, or disgust? At their best films can uniquely push boundaries of taste and truth for reasons as holy as any other mythmaking. When such emotional and narrative travails result in an accomplishment as rich as Von Trier’s masterpiece, we as audiences are left forever changed long after the bells have rung. -Jason Gorber
"Elephant"
I considered the concept of film as an empathy machine as I was shaken again by another school shooting. This time it was in Nashville, but it will be somewhere else next week and somewhere else the week after that, and I feel helpless to protect not only my children but the thousands of people impacted by gun violence every day. It got me thinking about the little empathy people have that value profit over protection and I realized that when I struggle emotionally with an issue, I often think about how Roger would have responded. People commonly ask me if I think Roger would have liked a movie that came out since he passed. I wonder too. But I think I miss even more the way he unapologetically used his platform to comment not only on art but the world from which it emerges. I wonder what Roger would have written about climate change in the last decade, about the political divides in this country, and about school shootings, among so many other issues. And that consideration brought me to "Elephant," a phenomenal piece of writing about the intersection of artist and subject matter. In the review, he says, "Hollywood is in the catharsis business," noting how Van Sant defies that by giving no easy answers. It got me thinking that maybe we could use more films like Van Sant's that hold a mirror up to reality without tidy resolutions. Empathy is often mistaken for a product of only uplifting stories, tales of overcoming adversity—the "catharsis business." But it's just as important that the machine shows us the dark side of humanity too. Roger writes, "Van Sant sidesteps all the conventional modes of movie behavior and simply shows us sad, sudden death without purpose." Purposeless violence is an increasingly common reality, and it's a testament to Van Sant's art and Roger's analysis of it that they both still speak to me in a time of emotional crisis two decades later. -Brian Tallerico
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
A review of Roger's that I think highlights not only a film's empathetic core but also the empathetic nature of his writing would be his review for "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." As he acknowledges in the review, some older critics (who he refers to as "previous adults") snarkily wrote the film off as inconsequential teen fodder. But it's clear from his glowing review that he not only takes teen-oriented media seriously but found solace of his own in the film's empathetic message about embracing your status as an outsider and learning to love your own eccentricities. He opens the review with, "All of my previous selves still survive somewhere inside of me, and my previous adolescent would have loved "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." I think that's a beautiful summation not only of how the film is able to find and draw out the viewers' inner adolescence, but also a testament to Roger's capacity for writing that so yet effectively captured what makes a film wonderful. -Lauren Coates
The highly anticipated Martin Scorsese film "Killers of the Flower Moon," centering on the Osage Nation Reign of Terror in 1920s Oklahoma, which will be released October 6, accentuates the murder and corruption of people with Osage heritage. Empathy comes to mind as the film's source material, a bestselling book of the same name, tells of people who stepped up, risking their lives to help. How would Roger Ebert frame his review if he were still with us? In comparison, we have indications as Roger's review of Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," in 1993, speaks of a hero Oskar Schindler who risked his life to save over 1,000 Jewish people from death by hiding them in his factories. Empathy appears in how much compassion and understanding we give to one another; Roger's second review of the film, written in 2001, is one of my favorites as he delves further into the hero Oskar Schindler. He teaches and guides us through his analysis of not only the film but also studies the hero's actions and Spielberg's filmmaking choices. The last paragraph in his review is personal and one of my favorites; he writes, "The film's ending brings me to tears." And how would Roger break down Scorsese's Osage film, who he has proclaimed his favorite living filmmaker? Fortunately, the answer is clear—by reading Roger's reviews, based on empathy. -Sarah Knight Adamson
"Diary of a Country Priest"
Chaz asked everyone affiliated with the site to commemorate the occasion by writing on the theme of empathy. The word struck me because I associated it with Roger’s writing long before he described cinema as a machine that generates empathy. I thought back on the decades before I first met him to try to figure out exactly when I began to associate “empathy” with Roger specifically, and realized that it was when I read his 2011 essay on Robert Bresson’s drama “Diary of a Country Priest,” nearly a quarter century after seeing it for the first time. (Read this full piece here.) -Matt Zoller Seitz
The power of empathy is the way in which it catches you by surprise. You think you’re just going to see a movie, and then suddenly you become emotionally engaged by the situations and circumstances of the strangers of the screen. Roger’s review of "The Deer Hunter" (1978) states, “It gathers you up, it takes you along, it doesn’t let up.” When the film ended, it took me almost 20 minutes to compose myself enough to leave the theater. I had never wept like that in public before. The film asked me to share the pain of loss and friendship. -Eric Pierson
Other people will always be something of a mystery, as much as we may yearn to solve them. Empathy is the force that keeps our investigation going. No documentary quite captured this dogged pursuit like Errol Morris’ “Gates of Heaven,” a beguiling and transcendent survey of naturally enigmatic folk whose lives and furry loved ones are deeply connected to a pet cemetery. The 1978 film was made by a young Errol Morris and primed for a kindred soul like Roger’s for endless excavation. In his Great Movies essay about the film, he said he has seen it “perhaps 30 times,” and “I’m still not near the bottom of it.” Part of this is the complex tone Morris creates. As Roger writes about what Morris chooses to emphasize and how, the film can be “serious or satirical, funny or sad, sympathetic or mocking.” But it’s the people who make it undefinable, too: their expansive observations on grief, often on the subject of pet memories, are philosophies broadcast from one’s core. ("There's your dog; your dog's dead. But where's the thing that made it move? It had to be something, didn't it?") “Gates of Heaven” is as expansive as everything above ground and under it; it’s no wonder that Roger kept returning to it, championing its empathetic portrayal of people that comes with more mysteries than answers. -Nick Allen
The first time I ever watched a movie shortly after reading Roger's review of it was with his essay on "The Third Man" contained in the first volume of his The Great Movies book series. I watched it early in 2006, a few weeks after graduating college when I had no idea what to do with my life. I had just bought "The Great Movies" at the end of an aimless evening wandering around Borders (RIP), and the way I responded to both the film and to Roger's writing about it had a profound impact on me. Roger loved movies about people doing the right thing, and I still think about the way he compared "The Third Man" to "Casablanca" (both among his favorite films ever). In "Casablanca," doing the right thing meant sending the girl away, but in "The Third Man," doing the right thing meant watching the girl slowly walk away by her own choice. And yet both men, despite knowing what they were likely to lose, made the right choice simply because it was the right thing to do. Roger loved that about both films, and I loved that about Roger. -Daniel Joyaux
Roger named Steven Spielberg’s "The Color Purple" the best film of 1985. Based on Alice Walker’s novel, the film has immense depth, and tears are bound to fall from the ugly truths displayed. Although it was nominated for nearly a dozen Oscars, it won none. The film is a masterpiece, and the acting is superb and unforgettable. In Black families, the characters are often imitated, and lines recited; even in moments of weakness and hurt, this levity can be proof that Black people truly possess the Secret of Joy. The film captures an unfortunate relatability to older audiences, but the fact that younger audiences make light of it on social media platforms like TikTok shows that we’ve become desensitized from the painful truth, making it fodder for the masses. The film evokes empathy from the beginning, so much so, that you feel like a delicate purple flower that should never go unnoticed. Roger showed honor to a film not fully recognized by Hollywood and expressed how he connected to characters like Celie. "The Color Purple" brings great connectivity and understanding. -Niani Scott
It is not just movies that make us cry that teach us empathy. Comedies make us see through the eyes and into the characters' hearts just as well or better. The movie the American Film Institute designated as the funniest movie of all time, selected by Roger as indisputably great, is the classic “Some Like it Hot,” directed by Billy Wilder. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play musicians on the run from brutal gangsters. They pretend to be women so they can hide out with an “all-girl band.” In the early scenes, we see both, especially Curtis’ character Joe, objectify and take advantage of women. Joe tries to continue that pattern with Marilyn Monroe as Sugar, a member of his new band. But “being” women shows the men what it feels like to be “othered” and preyed upon. Sugar’s confiding in them because she thinks they’re women that teaches them that women are vulnerable and worthy of respect and love. One of the film’s funniest scenes is when Lemmon’s character loses himself so completely in a female perspective that he begins to forget who he is. Seeing these men learn empathy reminds us how we can imagine others’ perspectives to empathize more fully, too. -Nell Minow
I pick 2011’s “The Tree of Life” as an empathy machine, one that clicked with Roger’s boyhood upbringing. He wrote in his intro: "Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I've seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," and it lacked Malick's fierce evocation of human feeling. Several directors once yearned to make no less than a masterpiece, but now there are only a few. Malick has stayed true to that hope since his first feature in 1973."
Roger continued to reveal how Malick's film transported him: "I didn't know when a film has connected more immediately with my own personal experience. In uncanny ways, the central events of "The Tree of Life" reflect a time and place I lived in, and the boys in it are me. If I set out to make an autobiographical film, and if I had Malick's gift, it would look so much like this. His scenes portray a childhood in a town in the American midlands, where life flows in and out through open windows. There is a father who maintains discipline and a mother who exudes forgiveness, and long summer days of play and idleness and urgent unsaid questions about the meaning of things." -Susan Wloszczyna
From the first time I saw it, “Tokyo Story” left an indelible impression on me. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu and released in 1953, it's just as relevant today as it was then. It’s a universal film about getting older, family responsibilities, and making sacrifices for those we love that anybody can relate to. I thought I knew everything there was to know about “Tokyo Story,” and the children's lack of interest in their aging parents was solely about disrespect. Imagine, their late son’s widow makes more time for this elderly couple than their children! But Ebert looked deeper into why the children might not be attentive toward their parents–it’s a veil to protect them from dealing with more delicate questions about life and happiness. When someone asks how your day is going, the typical response is to answer in the affirmative, “I’m good.” As a society, we rarely want to get into the minutia of our daily lives, so all that’s left is slight pleasantries. I can now see those children in a different light, as their indifference might not solely lie with the inconvenience caused by a disruption of their daily lives, but rather, protecting themselves from the harsh truths that exist in all our lives about our parents, aging, and what comes next. -Max Covill
In 2012, Roger Ebert reviewed Sang-soo Hong's "The Day He Arrives" and expressed his admiration for the film's ability to capture the human condition. Ebert described the film as a portrayal of how people live, talk, strive, and pass their days. The South Korean drama depicts the protagonist, Seong-jun, visiting his friend in Seoul, where time seems to melt into an endless loop. Ebert referred to this as a "circle of loneliness" and praised the film for its ability to convey a universal truth. The audience is left with a pearl of bittersweet wisdom that reminds us to face the present moment as life presents itself in no more than today's worth of time. -Brandon Towns
Until this week, there was only one Hal Ashby film from the 1970s I had not seen: "Coming Home." I was greatly moved by the film and found it to be (contrary to those who think of it as a less personal entry in the Ashby oeuvre) a perfect example of the late auteur’s cinema. Ashby was funny and often irreverent, but the quality that stands out as I age is how he loved his characters. This was not the base sentimentality pretending to be love that leads to romanticized dishonesty, nor did this feeling permit the storyteller to give his characters inauthentic happy endings. The root of Ashby’s love was empathy. Ashby empathized intensely with his characters, even the characters (like Bruce Dern’s Captain Bob Hyde, a military man and true believer who gladly goes to Vietnam only to have everything he believes in melt away) who didn’t have much in common with the filmmaker. I looked up Roger Ebert’s review the next day. Our experience of the film was separated by 45 years, but that gulf was erased as soon as I began reading the review. Ebert was an ideal person to review Ashby because his reviews evinced the same love born of empathy Ashby’s films did. He summed up the film, which is driven by the illicit stateside love affair between Captain Hyde’s wife Sally and a paraplegic Vietnam veteran named Luke (played by Jane Fonda and Jon Voight, respectively, who each won Academy Awards for their work), thusly: “Thinking about the movie, we realize that men and women have been so polarized in so many films, have been made into so many varieties of sexual antagonists or lovers or rivals or other couples, that the mutual human friendship of these two characters comes as something of a revelation.” This kind of insight elevates a film review into a work of art itself. Ebert’s absence has been a profound loss for the medium, but I take solace in the fact that the beautiful words remain. -Brandon Wilson
When Roger Ebert once declared that films are like machines that generate empathy, he was referring to films that help us identify with the people that are sharing their journey with us. This is precisely why he was so drawn to the films of Yasujiro Ozu, whom he refers to in his review of "Floating Weeds" as “the quietest and most gentle of directors, the most humanistic.” In the opening paragraph of this sensitive piece of writing, Roger writes that “the emotions that flow through his films are strong and deep because they reflect the things we care about the most: Parents and children, marriage or a life lived alone, illness and death, and taking care of one another.”
Roger Ebert was one of the most thoughtful, understanding, and compassionate human beings I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting, and I always feel moved when reading this particular review because “illness and death and taking care of one another” was something he dealt with during the last chapter of his own life. His review of "Floating Weeds" not only encapsulates the idea of films as empathy machines but films as something we can turn to when in need of comfort after a loss, disappointment or misfortune. At one point in the review, he writes, “Floating Weeds (1959) is like a familiar piece of music that I can turn to for reassurance and consolation.” It gives me great relief knowing that when things got tough, Roger Ebert was surrounded not only by loved ones, but the films that he loved. The final sentence of this beautiful review perfectly sums up how the best films bring us closer together by making us recognize our similarities rather than our differences. He writes, “In his stories about people who live far away, you recognize, in one way or another, everyone you know.” -Wael Khairy
"The Grey"
Roger Ebert's review of "The Grey"—about men who survive a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness, only to encounter wolves—first describes Liam Neeson's Ottway by his occupation: "He is a marksman for the oil company. His job is to shoot wolves." Still, Ebert knows that what a man is hired to do, and what a man does, are two very different things; why he does it is another question entirely. Ebert wants to understand. Of the men, he writes, "They have the kinds of jobs you might take if you were desperate for the good pay, or perhaps driven to seek a place far from society where it is assumed that when you are not working, you are sleeping or drinking." Stranded in nature, Ottway and his men incur its wrath. Ebert notes the "pitiless logic" of the film's progression reveals more about them as individuals than you'd imagine. He observes as well how Ottway's struggle, between his survival instinct and mounting despair, is emblematic of what faces all the men, perhaps all men: "Now that his life has become precarious, he fiercely clings to it." That "The Grey" stunned Ebert is clear; he sat through all the credits and still could not shake it, even during his next screening. "It was the first time I've ever walked out of a film because of the previous film," he writes. "The way I was feeling in my gut, it just wouldn't have been fair to the next film." He knew that "The Grey" had moved him, and that he wasn't yet ready to let it go. -Isaac Feldberg
Roger’s review of “Santa Sangre” has a couple of stand-out passages, one of which speaks to the hard core of his career-long search for art, empathy, and meaning in filmmaking. The first part of this review that comes to mind is when Roger says there should be more horror movies for adults. “Of course the movie is rated NC-17,” he writes. Then he says something that I honestly wasn’t sure was in this article; at first I thought it might be in Roger’s piece on the nightmarish WW2 drama “Come and See.”
I still hold onto my early reservations, partly because my experiences with Jodorowsky’s movies are my own. For starters, I first knew him as a comic book writer, having devoured his The Metabarons comics when I was a teenager. I also love the concluding line of Roger’s “Santa Sangre” review, where he speculates that “Maybe one difference between great horror films and all the others is that the great ones do not celebrate evil, but challenge it.” I don’t completely agree, but I am still wondering if Roger was on to something. -Simon Abrams
Whenever I'm asked about my favorite Roger Ebert reviews, I almost inevitably go to what he wrote about David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” when it came out in 1986. Even though I disagree with him completely in regards to the film in question, the ideas and observations that he raises in his analysis of that film are so intriguing and so powerfully voiced that it still makes for fascinating reading. One element that makes it so interesting is his discussion about Isabella Rossellini’s brave and bold performance and how he felt that Lynch was undercutting the intensity of her work with his oddball and ironic approach to the material. Instead of merely focusing on the film’s stylistic content, he delved deeper into the trust that forms between performers and directors, especially in the service of the kind of risky material found in a film like “Blue Velvet,” and how he felt that Lynch did not live up to his end of the bargain in this case. Again, I do not necessarily agree with his criticisms, but his observations on the actor-filmmaker relationship have always stuck with me. Whenever I see and come to review a film that involves emotionally fraught material of this sort, they inevitably come to mind. -Peter Sobczynski
Roger Ebert’s proclamation of film as an empathy machine is perhaps one of the aptest descriptions of the power of cinema. Lynne Ramsey’s 2017 film "You Were Never Really Here” encapsulates this idea at its full power. A film that could easily be swayed into brawny action territory instead chooses to dive directly into the heart. Focused on a hitman named Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) as he endeavors to save a young girl from trafficking, we follow not only the poignancy of a child at risk but also Joe’s own emotional skeletons. The film holds back the physical, cutting away from moments of brutality. The impact is not in hammers to heads or bullets in bodies. Instead, its cutaways into surreal dream sequences and painterly asides of slow-moving depressive spells that pulse with power and reverb in mind and heart. Violence is treated as a peripheral consequence, while Joe’s trauma, depression, and a choking sense of dissociation drive him forward task-wise and helplessly hold him back emotionally. Even as we watch bodies fall (albeit sex trafficker bodies) by his hand, we long for him to come out on the other side, as we’re drained by the hopelessness he feels himself and the yearning for him to swim above the surface. Through patient direction, lingering cinematography, and a dynamo lead performance from Phoenix, “You Were Never Really Here” takes the distant, cold-hearted prototype of a contract killer and renders him tangibly, emotionally, and desperately human. -Peyton Robinson
Various Reviews
I’ve always been a sensitive soul. This year’s “Aftersun” wrecked me in the final moments, as did two googly-eyed rocks who spoke only in thoughts, but I’ve wept at plenty of other films. I cry when Edward Scissorhands makes snow, and an older Kim imagines dancing in it. When Dragline recounts Luke’s exploits, and Red skips parole to see his friend and shake his hand. I get teary when EVE’s spark revives WALL-E, Mad Max tells Furiosa his name, and Peter Quill eulogizes Yondu, the only father he’s ever known.
I mention all this not to show what a sap I am but to note how odd I’ve felt not to cry when diagnosed with cancer. The doctor caught it in December. I had surgery in January, and I’m rebounding well, though I’m undergoing chemotherapy to reduce my chances of recurrence. I'm not dying or anything, as I've said a few times, reassuring others as much as myself. Yet I often wonder where the tears are, perhaps hiding somewhere till I'm off this train. Still, when I need to think or feel beyond “weird” or “surreal,” I cue up those empathy machines. Some scenes or films I know will bring on the waterworks are too intense for me right now, so I turn back to the Guardians, watching when Peter tells Mantis how learning she’s his sister is the best present ever. Or I weep from the climax through the credits of “The Magician’s Elephant,” which might have struck me hard anyway, but these days hearing how something is impossible only until it's not hits me straight in the heart. Movies, indeed, are empathy machines, but they’re also therapy. As much as they open our minds to new experiences, sometimes we need their help to restore us, to tap into those places we’re otherwise not ready to go. -Valerie Kalfrin
"Wattstax"
I gotta take it all the way back to 1973, when he wrote a review of one of my favorite concert films, "Wattstax." In his review, Ebert recognized “the sense of spontaneous joy that fills the film.” He even spends the first few paragraphs giving a detailed description of the messianic entrance headlining act Isaac Hayes gives when he hits the stage. Ebert appreciated not just the music (provided by various Stax artists of the era) but the different Black voices (including a young Richard Pryor) director Mel Stuart gave the floor to when he filmed interviews. "Wattstax" showed a well-rounded, multi-dimensional view of Black America, back when the forums for Black folk were quite limited. The review is not on the site, but I found it on Newspapers.com. -Craig Lindsey
]]>Happy Birthday Roger! Today, June 18th, would be your 80th Earth Birthday! So in anticipation of our Black Writers Week, we are publishing a compilation of 15 reviews of various essential films by Black directors. We hope you are getting a bird's eye view of this. But for those still here, please Click on each title, and you will be directed to the full review...Love, Chaz
Antwone Fisher (2002), directed by Denzel Washington
"'Antwone Fisher,' based on the true story of the man who wrote the screenplay, is a film that begins with the everyday lives of naval personnel in San Diego and ends with scenes so true and heartbreaking that tears welled up in my eyes both times I saw the film. I do not cry easily at the movies; years can go past without tears. I have noticed that when I am deeply affected emotionally, it is not by sadness so much as by goodness. Antwone Fisher has a confrontation with his past, and a speech to the mother who abandoned him, and a reunion with his family, that create great, heartbreaking, joyous moments."
Baadasssss! (2004), directed by Mario Van Peebles
"Mario Van Peebles was 13 when the movie was being made, and was pressed into service by his father to play Sweetback as a boy. That involved a scene with a hooker in the brothel that still, today, Mario must feel resentment about, since in 'Baadasssss!' he makes a point of showing that some of the crew members and his father's girlfriend, Sandra (Nia Long), objected to it. But Melvin was a force of nature, a cigar-chewing renaissance man who got his own way. Only sheer willpower forced the production ahead, despite cash and personnel emergencies, and 'Sweet Sweetback' is like a textbook on guerrilla filmmaking."
Boys N the Hood (1991), directed by John Singleton
"There is always the possibility that words will lead to insults, that insults will lead to a need to 'prove their manhood,' that with guns everywhere, somebody will be shot dead. These are the stark choices in John Singleton’s 'Boyz N the Hood,' one of the best American films of recent years. The movie is a thoughtful, realistic look at a young man’s coming of age, and also a human drama of rare power - Academy Award material. Singleton is a director who brings together two attributes not always found in the same film: He has a subject, and he has a style. The film is not only important, but also a joy to watch, because his camera is so confident and he wins such natural performances from his actors."
Daughters of the Dust (1992), directed by Julie Dash
"The film doesn't tell a story in any conventional sense. It tells of feelings. At certain moments we are not sure exactly what is being said or signified, but by the end we understand everything that happened - not in an intellectual way, but in an emotional way. We learn of members of the Ibo people who were brought to America in chains, how they survived slavery and kept their family memories and, in their secluded offshore homes, maintained tribal practices from Africa as well. They come to say goodbye to their land and relatives before setting off to a new land, and there is the sense that all of them are going in the journey, and all of them are staying behind, because the family is seen as a single entity."
Do the Right Thing (1989), directed by Spike Lee
"Spike Lee's 'Do the Right Thing' is the most controversial film of the year, and it only opens today. Thousands of people already have seen it at preview screenings, and everywhere I go, people are discussing it. Some of them are bothered by it; they think it will cause trouble. Others feel the message is confused. Some find it too militant, others find it the work of a middle-class director who is trying to play street-smart. All of those reactions, I think, simply are different ways of avoiding the central fact of this film, which is that it comes closer to reflecting the current state of race relations in America than any other movie of our time."
Eve's Bayou (1997), directed by Kasi Lemmons
"All of these moments unfold in a film of astonishing maturity and confidence; 'Eve's Bayou,' one of the very best films of the year, is the debut of its writer and director, Kasi Lemmons. She sets her story in Southern Gothic country, in the bayous and old Louisiana traditions that Tennessee Williams might have been familiar with, but in tone and style she earns comparison with the family dramas of Ingmar Bergman. That Lemmons can make a film this good on the first try is like a rebuke to established filmmakers."
The Five Heartbeats (1991), directed by Robert Townsend
"This is Townsend’s first traditional feature film; his directorial debut, some four years ago, was 'Hollywood Shuffle,' a series of comic sketches that parodied the cliched ways Hollywood has used black characters in the movies. Most of those sketches were under 10 minutes; this time, at feature length, Townsend shows a real talent, and, not surprisingly, an ability to avoid most cliches, to go for the human truth in his characters."
I Will Follow (2011), directed by Ava DuVernay
"For Salli Richardson-Whitfield, the role of Maye is a great performance, as she embodies emotions the script wisely doesn't spell out. 'I Will Follow' is an invitation to empathy. It can't have a traditional three-act structure, because every life closes in death, and only supporting characters are left on stage at the end. What goes unsaid, but not thought, is that we will all pass this way eventually. Amanda's family is African-American. The neighbor and some of the visitors are white. Why do I mention race? I wasn't going to. This is a universal story about universal emotions. Maybe I mention it because this is the kind of film black filmmakers are rarely able to get made these days, offering roles for actors who remind us here of their gifts."
Killer of Sheep (1977), directed by Charles Burnett
"You have to be prepared to see a film like this, or able to relax and allow it to unfold. It doesn't come, as most films do, with built-in instructions about how to view it. One scene follows another with no apparent pattern, reflecting how the lives of its family combine endless routine with the interruptions of random events. The day they all pile into a car to go to the races, for example, a lesser film would have had them winning or losing. In this film, they have a flat tire, and no spare. Thus does poverty become your companion on every journey."
Love & Basketball (2000), directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood
"Written and directed by first-timer Gina Prince-Bythewood (and produced by Spike Lee), it is a sports film seen mostly from the woman's point of view. It's honest and perceptive about love and sex, with no phony drama and a certain quiet maturity. And here's the most amazing thing: It considers sports in terms of career, training, motivation and strategy. The big game scenes involve behavior and attitude, not scoring. The movie sees basketball as something the characters do as a skill and a living, not as an excuse for audience-pleasing jump shots at the buzzer."
Malcolm X (1992), directed by Spike Lee
"Spike Lee's 'Malcolm X' is one of the great screen biographies, celebrating the whole sweep of an American life that began in sorrow and bottomed out on the streets and in prison before its hero reinvented himself. Watching the film, I understood more clearly how we do have the power to change our own lives, how fate doesn't deal all of the cards. The film is inspirational and educational - and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else."
Medicine for Melancholy (2009), Barry Jenkins
"'Medicine for Melancholy' is a first, but very assured, feature by Barry Jenkins, who has the confidence to know the precise note he wants to strike. This isn't a Statement film or a bold experiment in style; it's more like a New Yorker story that leaves you thinking, yes, I see how they feel. The film is beautifully photographed by James Laxton; much of the color is drained, making it almost b&w. The critic Karina Longworth writes: 'I guessed that the entirety of the film had been desaturated 93 percent to match the racial breakdown, but in a recent interview, Jenkins said the level of desaturation actually fluctuates.' The visual effect is right; McLuhan would call this a cool film."
Pariah (2012), directed by Dee Rees
"The film is an impressive debut for writer-director Dee Rees. It's said to be somewhat autobiographical. It began as a 2007 short subject, was brought to maturity at a Sundance laboratory, and one of the film's producers is Spike Lee, whose presence in Brooklyn must have been an inspiration for Rees. On a low budget, she takes advantage of the vibrant photography of Bradford Young, who also shot the original short subject. So what we're seeing here is the emergence of a promising writer-director, an actor and a cinematographer who are all exciting, and have cared to make a film that seeks helpful truths."
Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire (2009), directed by Lee Daniels
"The film is a tribute to Sidibe's ability to engage our empathy. Her work is still another demonstration of the mystery of some actors, who evoke feelings in ways beyond words and techniques. She so completely creates the Precious character that you rather wonder if she's very much like her. You meet Sidibe, who is engaging, outgoing and 10 years older than her character, and you're almost startled. She's not at all like Precious, but in her first performance, she not only understands this character but knows how to make her attract the sympathy of her teacher, the social worker -- and ourselves. I don't know how she does it but there you are."
Shaft's Big Score (1972), directed by Gordon Parks
"The creation of a movie superhero is a tricky business. You're not simply making an action movie; you're creating a mythical character who has to be durable enough to survive maybe half a dozen sequels. That was the case with 'Shaft,' the incredibly successful movie about a black private eye. The movie was made on a limited budget and there were a lot of rough edges, but John Shaft captured enough imaginations to take a million dollars out of the Roosevelt Theater alone last summer. The movie is intended as mass-audience escapist entertainment, and works on that level better than 'Shaft' did."
]]>Every year, on April 4th, the day that Roger Ebert died in 2013, we give the site back to the man who made it. This year, in honor of the incredible time in which the world finds itself, we thought we’d focus on times that Roger wrote about connection and rebirth—two things that we are all in desperate need of in April 2021. There are certain filmmakers who seem to be regularly interrogating how we connect with one another, and we chose some of Roger’s favorites by those directors, including Werner Herzog, Robert Altman, and Terrence Malick. Connection can be a hard thing to define—it can be between strangers, between family members, or between a greater view of the world. We thought all 13 of the reviews on the front page today captured something about where we are in 2021, even if they were written so long ago. That’s what we try to remember on this day: Roger Ebert’s writing was as timeless as the art that he covered.
The reviews with quotes by Roger:
“What thrums beneath "Almost Famous" is Cameron Crowe's gratitude. His William Miller is not an alienated bore, but a kid who had the good fortune to have a wonderful mother and great sister, to meet the right rock star in Russell (there would have been wrong ones), and to have the kind of love for Penny Lane that will arm him for the future and give him a deeper understanding of the mysteries of women. Looking at William--earnestly grasping his tape recorder, trying to get an interview, desperately going to Bangs for advice, terrified as Ben Fong-Torres rails about deadlines, crushed when it looks as if his story will be rejected--we know we're looking at a kid who has the right stuff and will go far. Someday he might even direct a movie like "Almost Famous."”
“Babel”
“Yes, but there is so much more to “Babel” than the through-line of the plot. The movie is not, as we might expect, about how each culture wreaks hatred and violence on another, but about how each culture tries to behave well, and is handicapped by misperceptions. “Babel” could have been a routine recital of man’s inhumanity to man, but Inarritu, the writer-director, has something deeper and kinder to say: When we are strangers in a strange land, we can bring trouble upon ourselves and our hosts. Before our latest Mars probe blasted off, it was scrubbed to avoid carrying Earth microbes to the other planet. All of the characters in this film are carriers of cultural microbes.”
“Both of these stories, about disconnections, loneliness and being alone in the vast city, are photographed in the style of a music video, crossed with a little Godard (signs, slogans, pop music) and some Cassavetes (improvised dialogue and situations). What happens to the character is not really the point; the movie is about their journeys, not their destinations. There is the possibility that they have all been driven to desperation, if not the edge of madness, by the artificial lives they lead, in which all authentic experience seems at one remove.”
“Cleo from 5 to 7”
“There is something psychologically accurate about this. When you fear your death is near, you become aware of other people in a new way. Yes, you think of the others, you think your life is going on its merry way, but think of me--I have to die. Cléo's awareness of that deepens a film that is otherwise about mostly trivial events.”
“I was never, ever bored by "Cloud Atlas." On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters. What was important was that I set my mind free to play. Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives. Because we have minds and clouds do not, we desire freedom. That is the shape the characters in "Cloud Atlas" take, and how they attempt to direct our thoughts. Any concrete, factual attempt to nail the film down to cold fact, to tell you what it "means," is as pointless as trying to build a clockwork orange.”
“Encounters at the End of the World”
“Herzog's method makes the movie seem like it is happening by chance, although chance has nothing to do with it. He narrates as if we're watching movies of his last vacation -- informal, conversational, engaging. He talks about people he met, sights he saw, thoughts he had. And then a larger picture grows inexorably into view. McMurdo is perched on the frontier of the coming suicide of the planet. Mankind has grown too fast, spent too freely, consumed too much, and the ice cap is melting, and we shall all perish. Herzog doesn't use such language, of course; he is too subtle and visionary. He is nudged toward his conclusions by what he sees. In a sense, his film journeys through time as well as space, and we see what little we may end up leaving behind us. Nor is he depressed by this prospect, but only philosophical. We came, we saw, we conquered, and we left behind a frozen fish.”
“Le Havre”
“This movie is as lovable as a silent comedy, which it could have been. It takes place in a world that seems cruel and heartless, but look at the lengths Marcel goes to find Idrissa's father in a refugee camp and raise money to send the boy to join his mother in England. "Le Havre" has won many festivals, including Chicago 2011, comes from a Finnish auteur, yet let me suggest that smart children would especially like it. There is nothing cynical or cheap about it, it tells a good story with clear eyes and a level gaze, and it just plain makes you feel good.”
“Robert Altman's life work has refused to contain itself within the edges of the screen. His famous overlapping dialogue, for which he invented a new sound recording system, is an attempt to deny that only one character talks at a time. His characters have neighbors, friends, secret alliances. They connect in unexpected ways. Their stories are not contained by conventional plots.”
“Persona”
“Inside, later, Alma delivers a long monologue about Elizabeth's child. The child is born deformed, and Elizabeth left it with relatives so she can return to the theater. The story is unbearably painful. It is told with the camera on Elizabeth. Then it is told again, word for word, with the camera on Alma. I believe this is not simply Bergman trying it both ways, as has been suggested, but literally both women telling the same story--through Alma when it is Elizabeth's turn, since Elizabeth does not speak. It shows their beings are in union.”
“Jean Renoir's "The River" (1951) begins with a circle being drawn in rice paste on the floor of a courtyard, and the circular patterns continue. In an opening scene, the children of a British family in India peer through porch railings at a newcomer arriving next door. At the end, the same children, less one, peer through the same railing at a departure. The porch overlooks a river, "which has its own life," and as the river flows and the seasons wheel in their appointed order, the Hindu festivals punctuate the year and all flows from life to death to rebirth, as it must.”
“Samsara”
“I fear I haven't communicated what an uplifting experience the film is. In its grand sweep, the chickens play a tiny role. If you see it as a trance movie, a meditation, a head trip or whatever, it may cause you to become more thankful for what we have here. It is a rather noble film.”
“The film's portrait of everyday life, inspired by Malick's memories of his hometown of Waco, Texas, is bounded by two immensities, one of space and time, and the other of spirituality. "The Tree of Life" has awe-inspiring visuals suggesting the birth and expansion of the universe, the appearance of life on a microscopic level and the evolution of species. This process leads to the present moment, and to all of us. We were created in the Big Bang and over untold millions of years, molecules formed themselves into, well, you and me.”
“The key performance is by Maribel Verdu as Luisa. She is the engine that drives every scene she's in, as she teases, quizzes, analyzes and lectures the boys, as if impatient with the task of turning them into beings fit to associate with an adult woman. In a sense she fills the standard role of the sexy older woman, so familiar from countless Hollywood comedies, but her character is so much more than that--wiser, sexier, more complex, happier, sadder. It is true, as some critics have observed, that "Y Tu Mama" is one of those movies where "after that summer, nothing would ever be the same again." Yes, but it redefines "nothing."”
]]>I was astonished and moved when I listened to "Roger Ebert," the new song inspired by words of my late husband, which serves as the lead track on Forever Just Beyond, a new album from guitarist/vocalist Eef Barzelay as Clem Snide (who is currently on tour). Barzelay said his life was falling apart around the time when his band members parted ways, and it was only through forging a deeper connection with his spirituality that he was able to overcome these challenges. On his new album, due out on March 27th, Barzelay collaborates with bassist Bill Reynolds and drummer Mike Marsh as well as fiddler Ketch Secor and cellist Joe Kwon.
Clem Snide (Barzelay) read my December 2013 conversation with writer Chris Jones, which was published in Esquire magazine. I was recalling how Roger would note with amazement that things on this earth weren't quite what they seemed. Whatever world he was tuning into caused him to lose all of his fear of death. Even though we didn't expect him to pass away when he did, he talked about how beautiful his life here had been; how fortunate he was to have found true love, and that even though he experienced illness later, what a beautiful life was waiting for him. If Roger's words in any way served as an inspiration to Clem Snide to not give up, it makes my heart overflow with joy. And Clem Snide (Eef Barzelay), I bet Roger appreciates it too.
You can read our reprinted article in full here. But here is an excerpt...
The one thing people might be surprised about—Roger said that he didn't know if he could believe in God. He had his doubts. But toward the end, something really interesting happened. That week before Roger passed away, I would see him and he would talk about having visited this other place. I thought he was hallucinating. I thought they were giving him too much medication. But the day before he passed away, he wrote me a note: "This is all an elaborate hoax." I asked him, "What's a hoax?" And he was talking about this world, this place. He said it was all an illusion. I thought he was just confused. But he was not confused. He wasn't visiting heaven, not the way we think of heaven. He described it as a vastness that you can't even imagine. It was a place where the past, present, and future were happening all at once.
Chris Jones, who is a wonderful writer, also wrote a rather fulsome profile of Roger in 2010 for Esquire, "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man." It is very much worth reading.
Below is Clem Snide's audio version of "Roger Ebert."
To find more information on Clem Snide, including the dates of his current tour, click here.
]]>Roger Ebert's typewriter is currently on display at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as part of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library exhibit, “Writers & Their Tools: Parchment-Paper-Processors.” It features many typewriters previously belonging to literary giants and trailblazing journalists, some of whom are among the college's most influential alumni. In addition to Ebert, past students represented in the exhibit include Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, whose Underwood Standard Portable typewriter is also on display, along with those owned by Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg and From Here to Eternity author James Jones. Ebert, Sandburg and Jones all went on to have their work published in Playboy.
Ebert's widow, Chaz Ebert, says, “Roger loved typewriters and had several of them, even when he switched over to writing on computers. He would have been delighted to see the typewriters of the other sons of Illinois on display.“
According to the Illinois News Bureau, the library owns the typewriters that belonged to Sandburg and Jones, and those that belonged to Hefner and Ebert are on loan to the library. Hefner’s typewriter was sold at auction in December, along with other personal items, and the purchaser of the typewriter, Mark Pepitone, agreed to loan it to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library for the exhibit. The Hefner display includes the warranty card for the typewriter on which Hefner wrote his name and Urbana address, a copy of Shaft, the campus humor publication for which he wrote, and the first issue of Playboy. Hefner used the typewriter to write articles for both publications.
Sandburg used his Corona Silent typewriter to write the articles that were later published together as a collection titled Home Front Memo. The exhibit includes a copy of the collection signed by Sandburg, manuscript pages that include notes on the title page design and changes to be made, a photo of Sandburg at the typewriter and a visor that belonged to him. Along with two of Jones’ typewriters, one of which is electric, the exhibit includes a manuscript of his novel From Here to Eternity and a copy of A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, his daughter’s semi-autobiographical account of the family’s time living in Paris. The Ebert materials include the issue of The Daily Illini with Ebert’s first byline and the first issue for which he was editor-in-chief.
“Roger Ebert served as a champion for film as an art form as well as film criticism as its own form of art in conversation with cinema,” said curator Ruthann E. Miller, during her opening remarks at the exhibit's opening on June 17th. “His Pulitzer Prize-winning criticism engaged movies on their own terms and in relation to their own goals. He expanded the purposes and goals of film criticism itself, enhancing its deep connections to cinema and the people who love it.”
Among the exhibit’s other items are a computer hard drive, a Yiddish typewriter—owned by the library—with Yiddish characters on the keys, as well as various technologies that preceded the use of typewriters, including parchment paper, quill pens and an inkpot, printing plates and metal type from a printing press. and a computer hard drive.
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library exhibit, “Writers & Their Tools: Parchment-Paper-Processors,” runs though Friday, August 30th, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For more info, including visiting hours, click here.
Header photo of Roger Ebert's typewriter by L. Brian Stauffer, Illinois News Bureau
]]>Three critics participating in the IndieWire Critics Survey selecting the Best Biographical Documentaries Ever Made chose "Life Itself," Steve James' acclaimed documentary on the life and legacy of Roger Ebert, as their top pick: Mike McGranaghan of The Aisle Seat and Screen Rant; Ken Bakely of Film Pulse; and Danielle Solzman of Solzy at the Movies. In addition, Christopher Campbell of Nonfics, Film School Rejects and Thrillist, also named “Life Itself” as one of the top three biographical documentaries based on books, alongside Brett Morgen and Nanette BurstInein’s “The Kid Stays in the Picture” and James Marsh’s “Man on Wire.” The article, which was published on July 9th, can be read in its entirety here.
“I might be a little biased on this one because he was a personal hero of mine, but I’m going to choose ‘Life Itself,’ the documentary about Roger Ebert,” wrote Mike McGranaghan. “The film gets at everything that made Ebert so influential — his talent, his personality, his cinematic knowledge, the passion for film that drove his career. Most of all, it captures his indomitable spirit in the face of a devastating battle with cancer. When we talk about people who have done ‘great’ things, it’s usually doctors, scientists, or political/religious leaders who come to mind. Film critics are not high up on that list. Having said that, Roger Ebert inspired a generation of kids (myself included) to grow up wanting to pursue a career in writing about movies. He single-handedly changed the face of film criticism in that regard. It’s pretty impressive when you think about it. How many individuals have done something of that magnitude within their fields? ‘Life Itself’ is a wonderful tribute to the man and his enduring legacy. I may or may not have teared up watching it. (I totally did.)”
“There are multiple components to an outstanding biographical documentary—not only does it have to comprehensively tell a life story, but it must use the medium of the movies proactively,” wrote Ken Bakely. “‘Life Itself,’ the documentary about Roger Ebert by Steve James (who also made ‘Hoop Dreams,’ another prime contender for this title), is a look through not only the life and work of one man, but the legacy he would leave, evidencing the construction of his impact while guiding us through his journey. Revisiting the film some five years on from Ebert’s death, his absence is even more apparent: not only for his views on the latest movies, but even more, his caring and thoughtful perspective on humanity. James’s empathetic-yet-unflinching profile provides the same kind of transformative power that its subject championed as one of the great powers of cinema. Sure, it’s primarily about one famous and impactful individual, but it also gorgeously portrays the interconnected world we inhabit, and the value of the passion for life and warmth of spirit we owe each other. Throughout ‘Life Itself,’ James uses the various parts of the standard documentary—interviews, archival footage, and voiceover—to sharply focused heights that move beyond comparison of elements, and into a unified vision of a gifted filmmaker telling a story with both immediacy and universality.”
“Hands down, ‘Life Itself,’ Steve James’ documentary on the late film critic, Roger Ebert, is one of the best that I’ve ever seen,” wrote Danielle Solzman. “It remains a travesty that that the documentary didn’t receive an Oscar nomination. Growing up, what Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert had to say on films played a role in the movie-going decisions. A few years after his passing, Roger’s legacy lives on. Whether it’s the people writing for RogerEbert.com or the approximate 100 film critics in Chicago. Every time that I watch a film in the screening room here in Chicago, I always sit in the seat in front of where Roger used to sit. I never had the chance to meet the legend himself, but through watching the documentary, it’s as if I did.”
]]>We are republishing this piece on the homepage in allegiance with a critical American movement that upholds Black voices. For a growing resource list with information on where you can donate, connect with activists, learn more about the protests, and find anti-racism reading, click here. #BlackLivesMatter.
Today, Monday, June 18, would have been my late husband's 76th birthday. Some of the things I most admired about him were his intelligence, curiosity, and above all else, his amazing capacity to empathize with others and show compassion. The following speech was delivered by Roger on April 4th, 1994, as part of Colorado Public Television's "11th Hour" series, dedicated to recording the words of wisdom left by distinguished individuals for future generations. The full video is embedded below along with transcribed excerpts of his remarkable speech. Happy Birthday Dear Roger, and wherever you are, thank you for leaving us with words that seek to bring us together. They are needed more than ever. Chaz Ebert
“The quality that is most needed in the world today is empathy: the ability to see things from the point of view of another person, or as the song suggests, ‘To walk a little while in their shoes.’ Yet there is little in our society that encourages empathy. Here in the United States, for example, in recent years we have seen much greater emphasis on ethnic and other special interest groups. People are encouraged to think of themselves as white or black or Asian or African-American or female or members of a specific religion or political party, as if those affiliations superseded their membership in the human race.”
“When a religion teaches that others are wrong, it’s not a very tolerant religion, and I am suspicious of it. I am suspicious of any philosophical system or any political system that says others are wrong. I think it’s necessary for us to listen, to understand that everybody has probably arrived at some sort of a truth in their own way, from their own background, given the tools that they have to work with, and that if we could listen to what they think their truth is, we can learn more about them and more about our own truth.”
“What is a good way to develop the qualities of empathy, curiosity and compassion, to walk for even a short time in someone else’s shoes? At least in my own life, art has been the best way. Through books and movies, through plays and songs, and all the other arts, I have been able to learn about and identify with people who are not myself. Art is of course many things, but I believe it’s most important role is to give form to emotion and then communicate it from one person to another. We will always be trapped within ourselves, but we can however usually understand how those closest to us feel—our relatives, the people we’re married to, our families. We can identify with them, but what about the others? What about those born to other tribes? I believe art is the closet we can come to understanding how a stranger really feels.”
“Be curious. Have empathy. Wonder what it is like to be someone else. Make a friend who is not like you.”
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