Recently, Esquire published an article about Roger Ebert, which inspired me to address Ebert, at least for a moment.
http://www.esquire.com/features/roger-ebert-0310-6
The friggin insert link button is all wonky for me, and I'm too lazy to figure it out.
I've only known about film criticism in the times after Roger Ebert was an influential writer, so it's at times difficult for me to imagine what it was like before. He is famous, not for reviewing movies, but writing significant literary criticism about them. At the climax of Ratatouille, there is an essay written by the character Ego, a harsh and stubborn critic.
(I could write a whole post on why I am so affected by that speech. I find it's plea for a return to sincerity disarming and heartbreaking) The reviews Ebert writes, especially in his Great Movies series, are different from what is being spoken of here. His body of work belongs among the great American essayists. His best reviews, or at least the ones I prefer, are not the ones that insist you either see or don't see a particular movies, but the ones where he attempts to delve into the core of a movie, elevating it to art. He has become, in my sojourn through great movies, a near constant companion who often offers a different perspective. He notices things I do not. His level of study over certain movies like Citizen Kane (which someday I'll get up the nerve to address), and Dark City (he did a full length dvd commentary on it), offers true guidance to the novice filmgoer. He said once, "I have here a heartfelt message from a reader who urges me not to be so hard on stupid films, because they are 'plenty smart enough for the average moviegoer.' Yes, but one hopes being an average moviegoer is not the end of the road: that one starts as a below-average filmgoer, passes through average, and, guided by the labors of America's hardworking film critics, arrives in triumph at above-average."
There is an argument you might hear from people who play lots of video games, which is that a gamer uses his brain interactively while playing video games, while a person watching a television is passive. Sometimes that may be true, but when watching a great movie, whether for the first or the twentieth time, it seems silly to call it a passive experience. It takes alertness in all sensory experience to watch a movie because it happens so quickly. There are sounds, dialogue and camera angles. Each is an integral part of film, and I consider it a blessing that I can watch them at home with a remote in hand to pause, rewind and confront what is being shown. My ever increasing knowledge of these things would barely exist without the guidance of Roger Ebert.
To write about Ebert at this time is, I know, cliche, but I hadn't seen a picture of him without his lower jaw until he appeared on Oprah. It's difficult to see the man, whose thoughts and optimism I find so admirable, in such a state. Over the past few years he has become a role model of mine up there with Bertrand Russell, and Douglas Adams. Each post, I understand I am writing about what is easily perceived as a pretentious subject, but my aim is to get people as excited as I am about these films, not to look down on those who don't care. Ebert understands that we experience film and books in the same way: We use them as both a means to escape into fantasy for a time, and at others, we use them as a mirror to hold up against ourselves, revealing things that we normally attempt to hide. He wrote once, and I'm sure I could find a better quote, but this will do, "A lot of people these days don't even go to a movie once. There are alternatives. It doesn't have to be the movies, but we must somehow dream. If we don't "go to the movies" in any form, our minds wither and sicken." He should be proud in the twilight of his life, that he encourage so many, myself included, to 'go to the movies' and become sincerely invested in the beauty and artistry of cinema. I will miss him when he is gone, and will always treasure his writings and influence over my life.
Showing posts with label Roger Ebert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roger Ebert. Show all posts
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
The Greatness of Movies
For some time now I've been watching as many of the greatest movies ever made as I can. Years ago I became interested in reading film criticism, mostly off of the A.V. Club website, and then in Roger Ebert's film reviews. He is famous for writing scathing reviews of hackneyed movies, but more interestingly, he writes about movies from a pop philosophical perspective. Many of his reviews reach beyond what we might think of as film criticism and act as stand alone essays. An example is this one of Synecdoche, NY, which is a baffling movie when first watched, but on repeat viewings becomes one of the best movies I've ever seen. I purposively say "best" rather than favorite. Without his review ( http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081105/REVIEWS/811059995 ) I think I might never have gone back to watch it a second time, but his writing made the movie sound so appealing, I had to see it again. Like Ebert, I'm not done with it, and will watch it again (.
His ongoing project is to review many of his old favorites in the "Great Movies" section of the Chicago Times Website, and oftentimes his reviews will make me work harder to understand why these movies is so revered. Like the AFI, I do feel like there is a bias towards older films, and even after trying to enjoy some of these movies I still found them quite boring and pointless. Still, because of this list, and because of these reviews, and have stumbled upon some movies which have expanded what I even thought possible to do with a movie.
This is the first of hopefully many posts in which I record, and process my thoughts about cinema (using the words cinema and film instead of movies is how to make yourself sound smart!), and explain why film can be not just entertaining, but as rewarding as reading a great book, or going to the opera, or watching a play. So here we go.
To make movies a valid art form there needs to be a specific reason as to why a story needs to be told using a camera rather than any other method. I imagine that the early plays were popular because they were able to do something that traditional storytelling was not, which was to provide a living embodiment of a character with which the audience could empathize with more immediately. A character is no longer something in the imagination, but has taken a physical form and can speak to the audience directly, or interact with his fellow characters. The empathy of the viewer becomes more engaged as the emotions and pains of the actor are more real than in story form. There may be other advantages to using the form of a play over story, but it seems that the main one is to draw out the emotions of the audience even more than stories.
I feel that the above paragraph doesn't even come close to doing justice to the topic, and perhaps I'll explain more later. For now, it'll have to do.
Movies, then it seems, have to be able to express something, or bring some preexisting aspect of storytelling to the foreground that can't be done as well in plays, poems, stories or novels. While thinking about this, I again stumbled across the Hitchcock movie "Notorious," and it revealed to me a small portion of how movies can do something unique among storytelling formats (I'll talk more directly about Notorious in a different post). As silly as it sounds, my revelation about movies was this: they use a camera to make them. The wonderful invention of the camera let's the viewer quite literally see what a character sees. It allows the director to focus in on tiny details, and microscopic reactions in the faces of characters without dwelling on any of them. In a novel, when a detail is pointed out it can throw off the rhythm of the story, while in a movie, if a camera lovingly flickers over a key being passed off between two people while maintaining the action at a constant pace. When a glimmer of a smile passes across an actor's face oftentimes the viewer won't even be sure he saw it. Or as an example, near the end of the movie, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," while Spencer Tracy (who in real life was ill and dying) was giving a final, long speech about love and race and everything, in the back of the shot his wife, played by Katherine Hepburn, begins to well up. The light glistens off each tear as she stands silently in the background, not even in focus. In a movie i found otherwise unaffecting, seeing those tears in her eyes overwhelmed. The beauty of that shot could go unnoticed because of its subtlety. Later, Robert Osborne (The guy who hosts most TCM things) informed me that those tears were not planned, but actually Katherine Hepburn realizing she was witnessing perhaps the last time anyone would ever see Spencer Tracy acting. That fact made it even more interesting to me that I found the shot so incredible.
These little moments, which continually I find to be the most affecting parts of movies, are one reason why movies do something no other genre can do. It might not seem like much, but never before movies, were actors able to bring so much to a story without drawing attention to themselves. These powerful moments, lurking in the background of great movies are something that cannot be replicated. Plays might try, but think about this. In the movie Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are dead, Gary Oldman (whichever he was), throughout, was discovering the laws of physics through accident, and when he did so it was briefly acknowledged by the camera and then passed over. This wasn't part of the script for the play on which the movie was based. If, even in a play a director tried to accomplish this, it would require that he draw attention to that behavior. Because of the virtues of movies, however, Stoppard was able to show us this display (which is the most memorable part of the movie for me). It's often been quoted to me from somewhere, that there's no such thing as subtlety in filmmaking. I think that's wrong, and that subtlety tends to exist in films in a way that it cannot exist anywhere else.
This only seems to cover a tiny portion of why film is great, and I hope to expand on this post in the next.
It's getting late, and I'm getting tired. Good night y'all.
His ongoing project is to review many of his old favorites in the "Great Movies" section of the Chicago Times Website, and oftentimes his reviews will make me work harder to understand why these movies is so revered. Like the AFI, I do feel like there is a bias towards older films, and even after trying to enjoy some of these movies I still found them quite boring and pointless. Still, because of this list, and because of these reviews, and have stumbled upon some movies which have expanded what I even thought possible to do with a movie.
This is the first of hopefully many posts in which I record, and process my thoughts about cinema (using the words cinema and film instead of movies is how to make yourself sound smart!), and explain why film can be not just entertaining, but as rewarding as reading a great book, or going to the opera, or watching a play. So here we go.
To make movies a valid art form there needs to be a specific reason as to why a story needs to be told using a camera rather than any other method. I imagine that the early plays were popular because they were able to do something that traditional storytelling was not, which was to provide a living embodiment of a character with which the audience could empathize with more immediately. A character is no longer something in the imagination, but has taken a physical form and can speak to the audience directly, or interact with his fellow characters. The empathy of the viewer becomes more engaged as the emotions and pains of the actor are more real than in story form. There may be other advantages to using the form of a play over story, but it seems that the main one is to draw out the emotions of the audience even more than stories.
I feel that the above paragraph doesn't even come close to doing justice to the topic, and perhaps I'll explain more later. For now, it'll have to do.
Movies, then it seems, have to be able to express something, or bring some preexisting aspect of storytelling to the foreground that can't be done as well in plays, poems, stories or novels. While thinking about this, I again stumbled across the Hitchcock movie "Notorious," and it revealed to me a small portion of how movies can do something unique among storytelling formats (I'll talk more directly about Notorious in a different post). As silly as it sounds, my revelation about movies was this: they use a camera to make them. The wonderful invention of the camera let's the viewer quite literally see what a character sees. It allows the director to focus in on tiny details, and microscopic reactions in the faces of characters without dwelling on any of them. In a novel, when a detail is pointed out it can throw off the rhythm of the story, while in a movie, if a camera lovingly flickers over a key being passed off between two people while maintaining the action at a constant pace. When a glimmer of a smile passes across an actor's face oftentimes the viewer won't even be sure he saw it. Or as an example, near the end of the movie, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," while Spencer Tracy (who in real life was ill and dying) was giving a final, long speech about love and race and everything, in the back of the shot his wife, played by Katherine Hepburn, begins to well up. The light glistens off each tear as she stands silently in the background, not even in focus. In a movie i found otherwise unaffecting, seeing those tears in her eyes overwhelmed. The beauty of that shot could go unnoticed because of its subtlety. Later, Robert Osborne (The guy who hosts most TCM things) informed me that those tears were not planned, but actually Katherine Hepburn realizing she was witnessing perhaps the last time anyone would ever see Spencer Tracy acting. That fact made it even more interesting to me that I found the shot so incredible.
These little moments, which continually I find to be the most affecting parts of movies, are one reason why movies do something no other genre can do. It might not seem like much, but never before movies, were actors able to bring so much to a story without drawing attention to themselves. These powerful moments, lurking in the background of great movies are something that cannot be replicated. Plays might try, but think about this. In the movie Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are dead, Gary Oldman (whichever he was), throughout, was discovering the laws of physics through accident, and when he did so it was briefly acknowledged by the camera and then passed over. This wasn't part of the script for the play on which the movie was based. If, even in a play a director tried to accomplish this, it would require that he draw attention to that behavior. Because of the virtues of movies, however, Stoppard was able to show us this display (which is the most memorable part of the movie for me). It's often been quoted to me from somewhere, that there's no such thing as subtlety in filmmaking. I think that's wrong, and that subtlety tends to exist in films in a way that it cannot exist anywhere else.
This only seems to cover a tiny portion of why film is great, and I hope to expand on this post in the next.
It's getting late, and I'm getting tired. Good night y'all.
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