Roger Ebert was my hero.
“Film critique is important, because film is important,” Ebert once said in a television interview. “Films can teach us empathy.”
On his recommendation, I saw The Color Purple when I was 14. “This is one of the few movies in a long time that inspires tears of happiness,” he said. Empathy: even though I was nothing like Whoopi Goldberg’s character, I felt it. It’s still one of my absolute favorite films. Thanks, Ebert!
Ebert’s show with Gene Siskel was a regular feature at my grandma Lorena’s house. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I got Lorena to go to The Strand theater in Creston, Iowa: The Empire of the Sun (she loved), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which she, surprisingly, adored), Dirty Dancing (which made her uncomfortable), Batman (which she thought was silly and dark.), and The Color Purple, which my grandma thought was a perfectly fantastic film, all except for the sex, alcohol, and lesbian kissing. More than going to the actual movies, Lorena seemed to love Siskel and Ebert.
I cannot ever remember a time when the pair weren’t on television. When I was little, I thought of them as extensions of Statler and Waldorf, the two grumpy balcony guys from The Muppet Show. (I was young, give me a break!) When they launched At the Movies in 1982, I started to appreciate their views. I found my 12-year-old self often agreeing with Ebert so much more than captious Siskel.
Many people see critics like Roger Ebert as out to kill joy, overanalyzing films, nitpicking to death. However, anyone who read Ebert’s Chicago Sun-Times column, which he started in 1967, or saw him on television sometime between 1975 and 2011, will know that Ebert expressed great love and passion for film. He wanted us to be happy. He wanted us to spend our money well.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, “Ebert sat through bad movies so we wouldn’t have to.”
Ebert also wanted us to be content in our homes. This television star and Pulitzer Prize winner (the first film critic) was also a staunch ally of the LGBT community, and our rights.
“My feeling is that love between consenting adults is admirable.”
Though a lifelong Catholic, he was always critical of the denomination’s stand on LGBT rights. In 2005, he revealed that his childhood home was devoid of LGBT prejudice. His mom worked for a lesbian couple for years, standing in at their wedding as a maid of honor.
He was so supportive that the Westboro Baptist Church had half a dozen people picketing his funeral.
As a reviewer, I know what Ebert said is true; film critics are the only buffer between the studio hype and the audience. We study good scripting, photography, acting, editing, costuming, make-up, sound, etc. Then we try to share what we’ve learned and experienced by writing about how these different arts come together in one great story, one film.
It’s our job. Studios can spend millions on marketing. Sometimes the only voice with nothing at stake is the critic’s. Also our job: critics can call greater attention to small films that would otherwise be missed. We do these things only for the good reason that we love films. It’s our religion.
Critics want to laugh at some goofy prank or pratfall, even three days after seeing the film – Sandra Bullock trying to climb a ladder in high heels in one of the few hilarious moments of The Proposal.
Critics want to be shown things they’ve never seen – the ghostly, mystical lives of Spanish orphans in The Devil’s Backbone.
Critics want to think about things they would’ve otherwise never even fathomed – how divorce is legally handled in Muslim countries, as shown in A Separation.
Critics want to suspend belief in such a way that it’s easy to cry – don’t ask me about my sob-fest after Dead Man Walking.
In short, critics want movies to do what playwright Arthur Miller said good theater should do: change lives.
Ebert believed in this, and he understood that movies could change lives. People are passionate about movies and film critique because the stories we tell ourselves are more than mere entertainment. They are vital. They are the way we open up, the way we experience more, the way we live vicariously, our natural lessons in empathy, our methods of exploring, and our introduction to the power of shared experience.
Ebert wrote many things, but here’s one that will always stick with me. It’s in his review of Brokeback Mountain:
“The more specific a film is, the more universal, because the more it understands individual characters, the more it applies to everyone.”
In that one sentence, Ebert wrote about the magic of good moviemaking, why it affects us all so deeply. This is the stuff that keeps me waiting in the dark to have my funny bone tickled, my heart broken, my mind expanded, and my life changed. I just wish Ebert were still there with me, so we could still experience it together.
