I know, I know. Making “Rap God” your track of the week is like giving Man of the Year to Hitler- but sometimes the villain deserves the award. I’ve never liked Eminem; in fact, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t out-right despise him. I understand that in a certain time and a certain place in my childhood he had some value in the greater cultural consciousness, and he probably still does, but I’d be completely fine if we could just forget him. Alright, I know. He probably did a few good things. 8 Mile? Maybe a masterpiece, or at least better than Get Rich or Die Tryin’. The Spartacus-like MTV video awards performance with the Million Slim Shady March? Legendary. I’ve tried again and again to give Eminem a chance, but I just can’t do it, especially after his most recent album, last year’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2.
I spend too much time thinking about criticism. That’s interesting, because I generally don’t like pieces on the “state of criticism.” What is the state of criticism? It exists, and that’s enough for me. But I also feel that criticism, a service and art form deeply misunderstood by the public-at-large and even many of its own practitioners, has gotten the shaft as recently. We seem to have mistaken “criticism” for snark, for cynicism, and for “criticizing.” My frustration with these misconceptions has led me once again to that most dangerous of hobbies: manifesto-writing.
In November of 2002, I stood in front of the Cinemark movie theater in College Station, Texas, my parents and older sister waiting patiently by my side. My eyes scanned the marquee. I had two options, both movies I desperately wanted to see. The decision felt so important at the time and I didn’t want to get it wrong. I looked at my parents, my sister, and then over to the line-up of posters. I closed my eyes for a moment, took a breath, and made a choice.
That day we saw The Santa Clause 2. I don’t know what course my life would have taken if I’d seen the movie I most wanted to see, Disney’s Treasure Planet. To be honest, I feel like similar conundrums appear regularly in my life. When deciding between two movies, records, or books, I usually always know what I actually want. But for some reason, I never pick it. When deciding on a movie to watch, I go with Starship Troopers instead of Seven Samurai. When buying records, I cop Meco’s sci-fi themed disco albums instead of Mac Demarco. I think it’s true with people too. Sometimes I choose to stay home when I actually want to go out. Sometimes the opposite happens. Maybe it’s the part of me that just wants to watch bad movies for a laugh, or the collector in me, or the not-so-good friend. Maybe it’s the fear of making what I actually want truly known. Maybe it’s self-loathing. Regardless of what it actually is, I feel like a lot of my life can be summarized by that conflict, the choice between Treasure Planet and The Santa Clause 2.
Since December of 2010, I have kept obsessive lists of every movie I’ve ever watched. I have a legal pad amongst my piles of stuff and a Microsoft Word document saved on my computer filled with the names of these films. I also have accounts on two separate websites (Letterboxd and icheckmovies) for this same purpose. For years I operated under the idea that I simply wanted to know what movies I had seen, but recently, I realized a different, unconscious motive existed. I want to remember every movie because when I remember a movie I watched, I can remember what I did that day. I think back to a few weeks ago when I watched Dazed and Confused and I can remember that I went to a nature preserve with one of my friends and on the way back we listened to “Rock and Roll All Nite” and it made me feel like watching Dazed and Confused. I think back to a few years ago when I watched Jacques Tati’s Trafic and I can remember school that day and how I made a crack about the musical Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, only to have one of my teachers overhear me and get upset with me because Spider-Man meant so much to him that the musical had made him cry. Once exposed, these memories do not seem like very much, but I think they do. I value every memory in the same way I try to value every person; even the ones that give me the most pain serve a purpose they may not yet understand.
If you read this site, you should know that I love the cinema. It’s impossible to explain the impact that the movies as a whole have had on me as a person, and it might not even be worth spending the time attempting to. Since we’re in a season of thankfulness right now, I thought it would be fitting to do one of my first posts in awhile about a few movie-related things I’m thankful for. I’ve been very busy with college and the like, so posting has been a bit low lately, but every once in awhile it’s good to reflect on a topic such as this. Without the movies, I don’t know if I would be here.
On another note, I’d also like to thank you, our readers, for keeping us going. It means more than I can say. So, here’s a list of 46 cinema-related things I’m thankful for.
1) Owen Wilson’s nose.
2) The way Wallace Shawn’s food dribbles down his chin in My Dinner with Andre.
This is an article I meant to write near the end of last year, when Disney announced that it had acquired Lucasfilm and all its properties (although I’m not sure if they picked up Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters or not…). It’s also something I meant to write yesterday, what with it being Star Wars Day and all. But alas, I didn’t get around to it either of those two times, so it’s now that I sit down at my computer to plop this story onto the screen in front of me.
What is this story? It’s the story of two kids, one stuck on a moisture vaporator farm in the outer reaches of the Dune Sea, the other in his suburban home in Central Texas. This is the story of one kid who spent his days blasting womp rats in Beggar’s Canyon with his T-16, and another who took up his time reading encyclopedias and exploring the jungle-like drainage ditches behind his home. This is the story of Luke Skywalker and me.
I don’t remember the first time I saw Star Wars, but I had to have been at least 4 or so. I have racked my brain so many times in an attempt to recover this misfiled memory, yet I can’t remember it. It’s too bad, as this is probably one of the significant moments in my young life. You see, Star Wars made me who I am today, probably more so than any other thing in my life that is not a living person. It’s probably impacted me more than most people, too. Without Star Wars, I would not be here at this exact moment in time at this precise point in space.
Just like it is hard to remember the first time I saw Star Wars, it’s also hard for me to understand why it struck me in such a life-altering way. Maybe the archetypal themes and ideas explored within the films meshed with my juvenile need for order and stability, but I know that this is just a load of malarkey. Maybe it appealed to my childlike sense of curiosity and wonder. Or maybe I just liked space battles. The truth is that I will never know. The only things I can know are how I feel every time the 20th Century Fox fanfare begins playing, or the swelling I get when the main theme begins and the words “Star Wars” pull back into the far reaches of space, or the absolute awe I experience when the Rebel Blockade Runner darts through the blackness above Tatooine, hotly pursued by the jaw-dropping Imperial Star Destroyer. I can only express the bone-aching sadness I feel when I hear Luke scream “NO!,” the tenderness inside when Leia says “I love you” and Han calmly responds “I know,” the solemn strength I draw from the celebration scene on Endor and Darth Vader’s funeral. These are the only things I really know.
As a child, the idea that someone could dislike Star Wars or, perhaps worse, not even have seen it was completely unbelievable to me. So much of my world spun around the axis of these films. In elementary school, there were some people whom with the only ground I shared was Star Wars, and in this way, we were able to become friends. There were friends I had lightsaber duels with, friends I shared potential plot details of the next movies with, and even one friend I bonded with only because I knew he owned Lego Star Wars and I did not. Star Wars found its way into every conversation I had with others, into every drawing I doodled while listening to lectures at church I absorbed but didn’t really understand, into every story I wrote in my spiral-bound school notebooks. My early attempts to impress the womenfolk were drawn from things I had gleaned from Han Solo and, later, Indiana Jones (it took me awhile to get to Raiders of the Lost Ark because the face-melting scene absolutely destroyed my youthfully weak bladder), although my rendition of these lines lacked the finesse of their original deliveries. I read my collection of Star Wars visual dictionaries and guides over and over again until the words and images became firmly etched in the recesses of my mind. I remember one moment on the playground in which one of my friends told me that I knew more about Star Wars than anyone he had ever met. It was my proudest accomplishment, and I quickly became even more of an oracle of information about the Star Wars saga as I got a little older and a little more adept with both a library card and the internet, turning my sights to the paradise of the Expanded Universe. Soon I started taking in websites about Star Wars and reading even more books on the subject, and at present count, I own over 20 books and 50 action figures related to the Star Wars universe. I still have the ticket stub for when I went to see Revenge of the Sith and I still remember the warm rush of tears I felt down my face as my favorite film series ended. At this time in my life, I was a little like Luke Skywalker, looking toward those twin suns with hope and wanderlust.
Yet as I became older, Star Wars also made things more difficult for me, as it and my voracious appetite for history books began to lead me down the awkward road to nerdiness. I wore the badge of “geek” with pride, obtaining a wallet solely for the purpose of having something to carry around my Official Star Wars Fan Club membership badge with. As I entered middle school, my obsession grew stronger while others swiftly placed these childhood delights in their memories. I became a little like C-3PO, someone who took himself and his endeavors very seriously, yet someone who others just wished they could turn off. In quiet moments I sometimes even began to wonder if this was worth it. Was it worth enduring bullies and social ostracism just because I liked a movie every one else seemed to have forgotten years ago? Was it worth missing out on potential friends just because of the things I liked? There were periods of time where I forgot what I felt when I watched Star Wars and became embarrassed of my favorite movie, replacing it instead with The Godfather or Dirty Harry or whatever “grown-up” flick I had managed to catch an hour off on cable. I’ll be honest, I have always felt a slight discomfort around people who self-identify as “nerds,” mostly because the only thing that kept me firmly rooted in nerd-dom was Star Wars. While after fifth grade I got into things like Runescape and The Lord of the Rings and Frank Herbert’s Dune, and for a time even became a serious frequenter of blogs and websites run by adults who still built with Legos, I was never into, say, Dungeons and Dragons or anime or anything else that it seemed like I was required to like as a self-described “nerd.” Yes, I did my time as a serious-minded video-game aficionado, despite the fact that I barely owned any video games of my own, and I even became a heavy fan of geek rock and nerdcore musicians like Jonathon Coulton and MC Frontalot, but I think this was more of a way for me to fit further in with nerds, or the closest thing I had to a group of like-minded people. At the end of the day, I owe being a geek to Star Wars.
While my interest in the Star Wars universe itself was swelling, my fascination with how these movies were made grew as well. I began reading about the life of George Lucas and the making of Star Wars, which lead me to other places in cinema history: it lead me to Pixar, to Steven Spielberg, to American Zoetrope, and eventually to the New Hollywood movement. George Lucas became my personal bearded savior, my guide to life and to the movies. He was my Obi-Wan, my Yoda. It is because of him that I realized my true passion: filmmaking. I began encountering names like Kurosawa and Godard, but I had no idea who these people were, or what they really had to do with anything. Nevertheless, as I mentioned in my recent post about Roger Ebert, the insatiable curiosity I had regarding anything Star Wars caused me to seek them and their works out. But seeing that I lived in a relatively small town in Texas with only a few small video stores to its name, my cinematic voyage would be delayed for a few more years, until the advent of Netflix.
Which brings me to my next point- Star Wars and the Internet. I owe a great deal of who I am to the Internet, as it provided a refuge for someone like me, who often has a hard time fitting in. I many times became lost in a Wikipedia wormhole, discovering movies and people I had never heard of. As an 8th grader I was able to see Koyaanisqatsi thanks to George Lucas’ Wikipedia page, which told me he had produced its sequel, which told me about the first movie, which led me to do a Google search, which led me to Hulu (then in its infancy), where I could view the film in its entirety. A short time later my family signed up for a Netflix account, allowing me to finally view many of the films which inspired my hero, in turn giving me inspiration of my own.
I have always loved stories and images, as shown by my early dreams of being an author, a historian, and a computer game designer, but through Star Wars and these other films I was able to synthesize my passions and realize my true dreams. Because of Star Wars, I knew what I truly wanted to do. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to take the ideas in my head and throw them up on the big screen so I could share them with everyone. While the types of films I want to make have changed drastically over the course of my life, these ambitions and dreams have remained the same for a very long time, and it is because of Star Wars that I was able to realize them.
My love of Star Wars waned as I entered high school, not by choice, but mostly because my eyes were captivated by other films. But by sophomore year, I recognized that it was okay to like Star Wars. I no longer had those quiet moments of doubt that I’d felt before. I was accepted into the film class at my school and found other like-minded people. For the first time in my life, thanks to Star Wars, I felt completely comfortable around a group of folks my age. I became less like C-3PO and more like R2-D2 or Chewbacca: a guy no one really understands but is still beloved by all, or at least many.
It was also sophomore year that I watched all the original Star Wars films again, as part of our unit on archetypes. While we viewed the 2004 special editions, which are obviously inferior in many ways to the original cut, I must say, there have been few movie-watching experiences as delightful as this. I felt that almost everyone in that classroom was as enraptured and in awe of the films as I was, even if they did keep talking. It was deeply powerful and I felt truly moved. But watching them again, I saw these movies in a different way.
As a kid, Star Wars was perfect, and it felt so real. It was my world. But now, especially with the added digital effects of the special editions, it doesn’t feel as real. It doesn’t feel quite so perfect. I think, metaphorically speaking, that says something about me and how I’ve changed. As a kid, I don’t remember much going in the world around me. I don’t remember the Clinton presidency, or Kosovo, or Columbine, or anything leading up to 9/11. But now I’m hyper-aware of what’s going on in the world and I constantly worry. So I definitely recognize that the world has flaws, many of them. I see the world through different eyes than I did as a kid. I’m still able to look at the world with a sense of wonder, but I also see all its imperfections. I guess what happened was that I saw the flaws in the world and then I saw the flaws in Star Wars. But even though I now see some of the flaws in Star Wars, I still feel that sense of awe and wonder. Yes, it’s not perfect, but it’s powerful. I suppose that says something about life.
There are a lot of people out there, even people who love Star Wars, who hate George Lucas. There may be periods of time where I am angry with the man, even furious, but I cannot bring myself to hate him. I was five when The Phantom Menace came out, so naturally I loved Jar-Jar Binks. I also grew up with the 1997 Special Editions, so it’s only through my grown-up eyes that I’m able to scowl at the new inferior-looking CGI effects. I only have a bunch of little tiny reasons to hate him. And all the reasons that I should love him outweigh those negatives. Without this quiet, steel-minded man, I would not be who I am today. You would not be reading this blog today if it was not for him and the film he made. I love Star Wars with all my heart, and the day I stop loving it is the day I stop living. I don’t know where the saga will go with these new films and I’m incredibly apprehensive. But at the same time, I still have that same sense of hope I feel every time I watch Star Wars. Even if J.J. Abrams ruins everything, even if the cow is milked until it can give no more, I will still have my memories and experiences, the ones that have molded my personality and shaped who I am.
At the beginning of this piece, I said it was the story of Luke Skywalker and me. I think I’ve come full circle as I prepare to graduate high school and move into the world beyond, meaning that I think I’m like Luke Skywalker again. Maybe as a kid I was like Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars, hopeful but a little over-eager and a touch too whiny. But now I think I’m like Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi. I’ve faced my demons and am prepared to move into the future with a stern resolve. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that no matter what happens or where I go, I will always have Star Wars. So thank you, George Lucas, and God bless you.
(I know it’s a form of heresy to post a link to the 2004 Special Edition ending of Return of the Jedi, and I hate Hayden Christensen as much as the next guy, but I couldn’t find a clip on YouTube from the 1997 Special Edition, whose “Victory Celebration” is in my opinion superior to the original’s “Yub Nub.” Plus, this one had the funeral pyre, one of my favorite scenes in all of the movies. I think it’s a fitting ending to everything I’ve been feeling.)
I don’t know what directly inspired this post, but I feel like it has been building within me for a long time. Maybe it was Steven Soderbergh’s recent keynote address, or my reading of Harry G. Frankfurt’s book On Bullshit, or the death of Roger Ebert, or the fact that I am graduating high school in a few weeks. Regardless of the initial cause, I believe these feelings are worth discussing and maybe, if I’m lucky, they will spark a new conversation. So here it goes.
Why don’t people care about things anymore? As both a critic and a person in general I’m wary of the collective nostalgia our society obligatorily feels for every scrap and kernel of history, yet I have to ask, has it always been this way? And if not, what caused our apathy and lack of passion? Who should we hold responsible? Was it Nirvana, punk rock, or Vietnam? Was it Marshall McLuhan, reality television, or Watergate? And if none of these things, then what? I don’t mean to descend into a rhetorically-questioning rant, but I just need some answers.
These thoughts really came to fruition while I was sitting on the toilet thinking about Iron Man 3. I’ll be honest, that’s where I have most of my best thoughts, but that’s beside the point. Mostly I was asking myself what purpose Iron Man 3 serves, and if it even deserves to exist. I don’t know if it does or not. I don’t even know if that’s for me to decide. There have already been two Iron Man movies, yet somehow there has to be a third one- all the laws of nature seem to be in agreement about this. For some inexplicable reason it is a fact of life in 2013 Iron Man 3 has to exist, and no one questions its purpose, or its existence, or why it is here. Somewhere in the stars the ghost of Isaac Newton has scratched out a fourth law: “For every two Iron Man films, there must be a third and equally dull Iron Man.” The Iron Man franchise is like soil erosion: constant, accepted, and greeted with no more than a general shrug by anyone except for soil erosion experts.
Now, I’m stating my thoughts on the Iron Man films as an outside observer, as someone who despite his love for the comic book character has no immediate intentions to see this new movie. There are many people who are genuinely thrilled for its arrival. But I still have to ask, how many of the thousands who this weekend will take in the new adventures of Tony Stark actually need to see it? How many will have their lives changed by it? Would the world still spin on if it was not here? Robert Downey Jr.’s pockets might be a little less padded and Walt Disney’s post-mortem laugh might be a little less maniacal, but in my assessment, I don’t think life would be that different.
Of course, this brings up a point Steven Soderbergh gently nudged against in his recent speech, which you should probably read if you have not. In a world with so much pain and suffering, what purpose do the movies really have? For something like Iron Man 3, the oft-toted answer is escapism. But in my personal opinion, these blockbuster escapist fantasies fail as legitimate “escapism.” They may provide a temporary numbness to our wounds, yet the counterfeit euphoria they supply does not offer a legitimate solution to our problems. I know I’m drifting toward elitism, but a fear of strong opinions is something that weak entertainment like the Iron Man films has indoctrinated us with. Because these movies do not engage our real emotions, we think these sentiments inside of us are weak and invalid, or worse, something to be afraid of. Modern movie marketing has convinced us that the dangers of emotion lie out there, in the real world, and that these difficult feelings are what we should be escaping from. But that isn’t true at all. In this modern world oozing with apathy and cynicism, the genuine emotional respite provided by the cinema is one of the only true forms of escapism left. We need to escape to emotion, not from it, as the land we are fleeing from is starving from a lack of sincerity.
We’ve been led to believe that the only things worth concerning ourselves with are superheroic fantasies, or narrative intricacies, or photogenically-enhanced bodies gallivanting across a green-screen fresco face. One way in which this has occurred is an overemphasis on “spoilers.” The internet is all tied up with the yellow caution tape of “spoiler alerts,” and it’s even begun impacting the way we converse with one another in person. I enjoy a good surprise as much as the next guy, but that’s not why I go to the movies. When your only motivation for watching a film is to find out about the rumored killer plot twist at the end, you know something is wrong.
Let me use an analogy. If you are a newly-converted Christian reading the Bible for the first time, would you be angered if someone spoiled it for you? Most likely you wouldn’t, because you aren’t reading the Bible to hear a good story. You are reading it for religious and/or spiritual reasons. This is why I watch movies. Many times to hear a good story, yes. But mostly for religious and/or spiritual reasons. The movies are my religion and the cinema is my temple. I know that regardless of where I am in the world I can step into the quiet confessional of a dark theater and have my soul cleansed. But this religion is under attack- from people who want to pepper it with an assaulting amount of advertisements, from people more interested in profit than poetry, from people afraid of their true emotions.
Maybe I sound like an old crank. Maybe I sound like an elitist, too. I think, however, that many of misunderstood words like “elitism” and “pretentiousness” are bastardized vocabulary terms that we have been taught in order to avoid engaging with our emotions. Most of the time if you start talking about feelings in a pitch meeting, your potential investors will get real scared real fast. We have heard time and time again that emotions don’t sell. But why should film above all other art forms be interested in “sales”? Yes, it is an industry, but it should be one made of artists, of people who love what they do. To paraphrase the Soderbergh speech, you may know how to drive, but you wouldn’t tell an engineer how to drive a car.
I find it incredibly depressing when a truthful, honest, and beautiful film like Jeff Nichols’ recent Mud, a movie which by the way could be sold very easily to a mainstream audience, is overshadowed by Iron Man 3 just based on the fact that the latter had an onslaught of advertisements in its arsenal. We have become forced into being interested in products and commodities instead of transcendence and epiphany. While many people might not be interested in these things, they can still have their lives changed by them. Their emotional quality of life can be improved by a beautiful film. I know mine has.
I’ll try to wrap it up with a few final thoughts. I have a friend in film school who recently made an absolutely beautiful short film, yet the teaching assistant in his class says he may not make a good grade as it does not have clearly-defined character motivations or much plot. Since when did these become the most important qualifiers in what makes something good or bad? I think there should be one qualification for what makes a film good and one alone: does it move you or does it not? I have no interest in films that do not at least try to move me emotionally, as what I am looking for is not to escape from my emotions, but to escape to them. I do not have time for anything not interested in doing that. Before you cry elitist, I recognize too that one can be moved by almost anything. I have been touched by Demolition Man and shed a few tears during “Come Sail Away” by Styx, so I’m not alien to engaging emotionally with culture that may on first glance appear to exist without merit. So maybe I shouldn’t write off Iron Man 3. Maybe the worth of its existence is for you to decide.
Movies are my one true love and passion in life. Some of the most beautiful memories in my life have involved movies, and many times I have sacrificed people in favor of films. This probably makes me a terrible person. I once had a friend say that my archnemesis Quentin Tarantino loves movies, not people. Maybe I have more in common with Quentin Tarantino than I initially thought. But at the same time, I don’t. Godard said that he loved women, not movies, because you cannot caress a movie; however, I believe that you can in a way caress people through movies. So maybe I’m not terrible. What I mean is that you can express your emotions for others through films, you can affect them and yourself and venture to a higher place. The cinema moves and takes us to somewhere we cannot reach on our own. It is a place of beauty and ecstasy and truth. Anyone who aims for less than that needs to go home and rethink their life, as Obi-Wan Kenobi once wisely told a Coruscanti drug dealer.
I might just be overzealous, but I think that what this world needs most of all now is passion. It needs dedication, sincerity, and honesty. It needs movies like Mud and people like Steven Soderbergh, not Tony Stark or Iron Man 3. I strongly believe that going to the movies can help us re-discover these ideals we seem to have lost touch of. At the same time, however, we also need to realize when to turn off the television or step outside of the dark theater and embrace the real world. Movies are a start, but it’s up to us, the audience, to finish the story. The emotional escapism provided by true cinema can begin in a theater, but we can carry it in our souls for the rest of our lives and use it to improve the world around us. If Iron Man 3 will change your life this weekend, then go see it. But if not, find something else that will. Find something that will send you in a better direction with increased understanding of life and how it works. Find something that will truly impact you. Find something that makes you want to care.
On April 4, 2013, the beloved film critic and self-styled “newspaper man” Roger Ebert passed away at the age of 70. He began his career at the Chicago Sun-Times and reviewed films there from 1967 until the day of his death. His words were more widely consumed than those of any critic in history, and he revolutionized criticism through his public television program Siskel & Ebert At the Movies. While he is most known for being the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize and having the most famous pair of thumbs in America, my connection with him is much more personal.
In many obituaries, the author has a tendency to overstate their relationship with the subject. Hopefully I can avoid this, but I doubt I will be able to. I never met Roger Ebert, or even really knew him, but it feels as if I did. It’s taken me a long time to write this piece, as I’ve struggled to find the words in this situation, especially when, as another critic stated, Roger always seemed to have the right ones. To a lot of people he might have just been a film critic, but to me he was more than that.
Roger’s work has always been a part of my life, as I remember his face leaping off the bookshelf and staring at me from the cover of an early copy of his Home Video Companion, which we picked up at a public library book sale at the end of the last century. But I never read his work seriously until my sophomore year of high school, when my mom checked out a copy of his The Great Movies III at the Larry J. Ringer Library, up the road from my home in College Station, Texas.
My long love affair with the cinema began in the 7th grade, when Star Wars dominated my life and a war-weary biography of George Lucas served as my simultaneous survival guide and Bible. I read about Francis Ford Coppola buying a gun for George Lucas, John Milius making movies and surfing on the California beach, and other prehistoric lore about Spielberg, de Palma, and the movie brats, causing my head to fill with visions of living in a bunker with a Super 8 Camera in my hand and a KEM editing flatbed in the corner. Other kids were dominated by the typical dreams of puberty; I fantasized about slitting and slicing and splicing film with a hot mess of chemicals and adhesive glues staining the sweaty beds of my fingernails; about running around the campus of the University of Southern California with an Arriflex camera set up on a dolly rig; about going off into the woods and making movies of my own.
At first it started casually, the rubber rewind button on my remote slowly wearing away to neatly fit the grooves in my thumb. I experienced the orgiastic sensation of viewing my first DVD (I believe it was Mr. Mom), the thrill of receiving my first movie via Netflix in the mail (It was Steven Spielberg’s television movie Duel), the awe of simultaneously seeing my first foreign film and first movie by Kurosawa (Yojimbo, and actually, it was my first consciously viewed foreign film; in third grade my teacher showed us Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, but I hardly remember it).
While my knowledge at this point was mostly limited to what I had learned about movies from numerous biographies and Wikipedia entries, Roger’s writing was a natural stepping stone for my budding cinephilia. I had encountered the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and Akira Kurosawa and Paul Schrader in some of my readings, but barely knew where to begin. I hadn’t found many of the truly great films yet.
I remember my very first interaction with Roger. As I mentioned before, it was through his book The Great Movies III. Seeing the jeweled green cover was like seeing the Emerald City in the distance and knowing the secrets, the magic, the wonder that lie within. I cracked it open and a new world exploded. Roger’s conversational yet lucid prose opened my eyes to the true beauty of cinema, to the mystery of the shadows and the power of dreams. I learned names like Ozu, Fellini, Wim Wenders, and Billy Wilder. To quote my favorite film, I had taken my first steps into a larger world, with Roger Ebert serving as my Obi-Wan Kenobi. I explored the galaxy of international cinema swimming like a celestial body around me, one that I had been previously blind to, and saw my first films by Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo), Jacques Tati, (M. Hulot’s Holiday), and Francois Truffaut (Small Change).
I quickly devoured everything he had written that I could get my hands on. Soon I discovered the wonders of his website and blog, learning more about the man while I learned more about the movies. Over time he introduced me to other film writers as well- to the neon lightning quips of Pauline Kael, the daring courage of James Agee, the almost scientific theory of David Bordwell, the radicalism of Steven Boone. Roger was someone who could appreciate a film like Solaris while also famously finding merit in one like Speed 2: Cruise Control. He taught me that criticism could be funny (as I learned from his review of Battle: LA, which he said was a film he would like to cut up and clean his fingernails with) while also being transcendently personal (like in his thoughts on The Tree of Life), and led me to begin forming my own opinions about movies and not be afraid to speak up.
I became a frequent commenter on his blog, always hoping that maybe he would speak to me. And once, he did. That was our only interaction. He responded to a comment I posted and said that great things would happen to me in life. Of all the words I have ever seen or heard in my life, I don’t think any have meant as much to me as those. What Roger demonstrated in his life, above all, was not just the beauty but the power of words. With words, anything can be accomplished.
Roger wasn’t just witty; he was deeply insightful and incredibly spiritual. His musings on the afterlife, evolution, prayer, religion, and death helped shaped my own personal beliefs at a time when I was lost. He once wrote, “I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.” That’s what I believe too.
The pain he felt in his last few years, after dealing with many bouts of cancer and surgeries gone wrong, caused him incredible suffering, yet he serves as an incredible example to anyone who undergoes extreme hardship. When he lost the ability to speak and eat, he became heard even more, releasing a cookbook and increasing his output enormously. In fact, two days before he died, he announced even more projects he would be undertaking despite a short leave of absence. His work ethic was remarkable and almost heroic. The dedication he had to his work should serve as an example to us all.
His thirst, to paraphrase Thoreau (and Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, a film Roger thought was mediocre), to suck the marrow out of the bones of life was unending. Whether he was off gallivanting with Russ Meyer on the set of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, or spinning a story at his favorite bar, O’Rourke’s, he recognized the value of experience and people. While a good portion of his life was spent sitting in the dark, he knew that sometimes it was just as important to turn the lights. This was the man, after all, who bravely asserted that video games are not art, who was selected to pen the never-made Sex Pistols movie, who (maybe) dated Oprah Winfrey. He was not just capable of seeing the life in movies, he saw the movie-ness in life, the magic and joy and art that exists in every human interaction, in every day that goes by. To quote the first sentence of his memoir, “[he] was born into the movie of my life,” much as we all are, yet he saw that life is just as miraculous and majestic as movies can be.
Roger Ebert was undoubtedly the most beloved and prolific film writer of his time, but he was also one of our nation’s greatest voices and a wonderful human being. He didn’t just love movies. He loved people. He loved life. His unending sense of wonder and awe never ceased to amaze me. If you get the chance, I’d encourage you all to read his memoir Life Itself. It’s one of the most beautifully-written and inspiring works I’ve ever read.
He has had an incalculable effect on my life and I will miss him dearly. It is strange, I always felt like I sort-of knew him, or I would at some point. Maybe I’m selfish for focusing on how he impacted my life, but I think that if there’s one thing Roger Ebert will be remembered for, it will be his unending love for other people, and how he impacted everyone who knew him, even if they only knew of him.
It’s been hard, but I’ve found these words, some of the finest he ever wrote, of comfort lately. “I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.” Regardless of where we go after we die, I can’t help but think that I’ll see him at the movies.
Hello, all! I’m glad to be writing for this fantastic blog again. I’m sure all you cinephiles have seen the trailer for To the Wonder, which was released a couple months ago, and I’m sure the first thing everybody said when they saw it was, “It looks just like The Tree of Life!” Well, yes, it’s all there on the surface at least: a free floating camera, bold and beautiful renditions of nature, voiceovers about the power of love, and big-name stars that Malick loves to put in his films. But before we go ahead and say that To the Wonder is going to be another Tree of Life (let’s actually take the time to see what the latter film was about, as it’s much more than its outer form. That’s just what brings it to life.
It has been almost two years since Malick’s Palme d’Or winner was released to the public. The film has seen its fair share of gushing praise and also a bit of contempt from critics feigning to be offended by its “bombastic” nature. I think many on either side have missed the point. They get caught up in brief descriptions of the film’s outer form and inner content without adequately explaining what each does for the other. Moreover, they attempt to analyze it as an ordinary film, when what actually makes The Tree of Life such a masterpiece is its effortless creation and use of a new cinematic language to tell a story so strikingly relatable that portions of it can only be described as pure truth. (I know, a bold statement to make considering what I just wrote about other critics.) This film takes a new path in all of the major forms of production, as its acting, writing, cinematography, and overall direction are all vastly different from any film in the vicinity. If you still haven’t seen this gem, you are long overdue for a viewing. If you are one of those who has seen the film and remain dubious of the its worth, I hopefully will convince you to take the time to watch it at least once more.
The Tree of Life, as many critics have said, is not an easy film to summarize. But to give those not familiar with it an idea, the film starts by revealing that a boy of 19 years has passed on, by showing the reactions of his various family members. The rest is essentially a massive childhood memory of the boy’s brother Jack, juxtaposed with a few out-of-this-world sequences that serve as metaphors to be compared with the main story.
The images that occupy the frame of The Tree of Life evoke some of the most powerful human emotions because they are things we have all felt before. Sometimes they make our hearts burn with love, and sometimes they sting with the loss of it. This is only magnified by the fact that these images are shown through the perspective of a child. Jack has two brothers, a mother, and a father, the latter two being enormous forces in his life. He is constantly stuck between the harsh toughness his father expects of him and the freeness that his mother embraces. We see this through family dinners where the children are asked to leave the table before a fight breaks out between the dad and his boys. We see it through the time mom spends frolicking around the yard with the kids while dad is away. And we see it when Jack takes his jealousy out on his younger brother by taking advantage of his innocence. Imbued occasionally throughout all of the poetic-realism of the film are voice-overs by the main characters, which are Malick’s way of asserting what he has shown. These illuminate the few concrete messages director Terrence Malick wishes to impose. Some may be turned off by these parts of the film. I’ve often heard the complaint that they make it too preachy, although I disagree. When we process the “lessons” Malick gives us, we are hearing a voice of reason through Jack’s head. We don’t have to accept that, “Unless you love, your life will flash by,” but I sure found it beautiful to behold Jack’s reaction to that. It is the great human connection that, for me, is what makes film great. Malick also uses spectacular images of the universe and natural phenomena set against the intimate gaze of this small family, a family that, portrayed against the enormity of all this, should mean nothing, but somehow manages to touch something deep inside us.
One of the most compelling reasons to watch The Tree of Life is that it is something completely new in the world of cinema. It introduces revolutionary styles of cinematography and editing that lend to its natural feel.
The cinematography of The Tree of Life is a crucial part of its success in rendering a fictional world that feels effortlessly real. Almost the entire film was shot without studio lights. Virtually the only lighting used was practical light (lights visible in the frame) and sunlight. In the first days of the shoot lights were brought in, but soon sent back because of the unnatural feel they lent. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki remarks, “It’s like you’re setting a tone and artificial light feels weird and awkward after that.” The other major part of the cinematography in this film was camera movement. About ninety percent of the film was shot on a camera stabilizer. This causes a beautifully flowing and constantly moving camera that feels much less formal and much more natural than in a traditional narrative. The camera stabilizer also allowed shooting to be much more spontaneous, which allowed the genuine unscripted moments of acting to show through. Because of the cinematography, you don’t feel like you are watching a regular movie. You feel like you are remembering moments of life because the purpose of the lighting and camera movement is not to shape perceptions or embolden particular scenes, but to place you in the memory and see it unfiltered and bare, which happens to be more beautiful than any studio set could aspire to be.
You will immediately encounter a pacing that general audiences are not used to. Initially, this could be frustrating for viewers who simply want to watch their ninety minutes of movie and leave, but those open to a new kind of experience will find this fresh and perhaps more effective than regular pacing. Instead of the traditional scenes that are used in most films to unravel the plot, Tree really only consists of three or four different segments. In fact, there isn’t really much plot at all. Whereas most movies are very deliberate with the patterns they take in their story arcs, this film is about letting the unintentional and the natural flow through as much as possible. The lack of plot is essential to the pacing of the film because it is not one planned scene coming after another to build on one great statement. The film is largely about interpretation. And really wouldn’t it be cheating to say something is up to interpretation when the filmmaker is in total control of how the visual and narrative information is presented?
To understand how this type of pacing is achieved, we need to look to the editing process of the film. After the plethora of footage was shot Malick worked with editor Mark Yoshikawa to create a pacing that flowed without tiring. In American Cinematographer magazine Yoshikawa stated, “If something felt intentional to Terry, be it a performance, a camera move, or a sound, he would react against it [in the edit]… We ended up just cutting anything that felt, and that gave way to the jump cuts, which give the movie its elliptical feeling.” You would think that a segment of a movie that lasts a good hour or so without changing much would get boring, but because only the most genuine moments were presented in the final edit, the effect is quite the opposite. Everything we see is fresh and exciting, and we are constantly connecting with the film, seeing this nostalgic memory just as Jack sees it.
All of these formal aspects, which create Tree’s own unique cinematic language, serve the film’s strongest aspect, its ability to interact deeply with human emotions and sensibilities. Roger Ebert, who gave the film four out of four stars, focuses mostly on this in his review. After describing how the film reminded him so much of his own childhood, he writes that “most of us, unless we are unlucky, have something of the same childhood, because we are protected by innocence and naïveté.” This means that you don’t need to have grown up in Waco, Texas in the 1950s to feel a connection to this film. What is really important is how perfectly Malick contemplates all the ways in which a child experiences and thinks about things. For Ebert it is the fact that the “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” that touch home. For others it may just be other personal events that these images evoke.
I hope it is quite obvious. I recommend this film entirely. It is not to be watched once and then forgotten. That’s not the type of film this is. This is a film you may watch for the first time and be a bit confused by. Maybe it all goes over your head. But this is the type of film that takes some time to process, as it is not just instant gratification. It is a beautiful interaction between humanity and art. I have always thought that the ultimate goal of a film, or any story, should be to connect with what makes us human. And that is what The Tree of Life does.
One of the most important issues in modern film culture is the transition of the medium from actual celluloid to digital. It’s also one of the least understood, as most audiences aren’t aware of the complex issues surrounding the debate. Those in favor of digital have essentially held the entire industry hostage in order to have their way, so the fact that films are shown digitally has become a basic part of movie-going life. But it’s not this simple. I recall going to a movie last year and being behind two people in line, a young boy and his older sister. The boy turned to his sister and said “What does digital mean?” His sister fumbled for a response before telling him that it “means the movie looks better.”
While to some extent that is true, it’s really not that simple. The movie-going public has rarely been informed as to some of the specific technicalities regarding the films they are watching, but I think it’s important for audiences to have a basic understanding in this debate, as they’ve become the puppets of individuals like James Cameron, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas (click the link for an excellent essay on this subject by America’s most prominent film theorist, David Bordwell), who’ve pushed their digital agenda so firmly and quickly that it’s been impossible for audience members to even know what’s going on. I wouldn’t say that knowing the varying millimeter varieties that film can be shot on or the difference between 4:3 and 16:9 is of the most pressing importance to the average individual, but the digital/film argument brings up some interesting questions about consumer preferences- and even consumer protection. If an audience is paying to see a restoration of The Lady Vanishes in theaters, they should be aware as to what they’re paying for and whether it’s the film in its original medium or a digital re-scan. You wouldn’t pay to go to an art museum to see scans or photographs of a Rembrandt or Cezanne, so why would you do that with a Hitchcock or an Ozu?
It’s not the same, is it?
My intent in writing this post is to outline some of the basic differences between film and digital, as I’m frightened by the lack of knowledge most people have regarding this situation. You’d be surprised as to how few people realize that most movies aren’t projected on actual film reels anymore, and that needs to be changed. Film is art, so it deserves to be treated as such. Both film and digital have their positives and negatives, so I’ll list some for each. Of course, this will be a simplified version of the complex discussion, as it’s something that can’t be easily explained in a blog post. But I hope that I can teach you something a little bit more than “it looks good.”
Film:
Pros:
– I’ll go ahead and state it right now: in most cases, I lean toward film. While I’m part of the newer generation who has barely known anything but film, and I’ve worked exclusively with digital in my own filmmaking, I personally hold a lot more regard for the aesthetic quality of film. Looking back on the early years of film theory, it becomes apparent that the initial fascination with the cinema came from its dream-like ability to preserve shadows, to capture a figment of a human’s persona and blast it onto a screen. Digital attempts to mimic life, and while many use film to do the same, the quality of the medium itself creates something totally different from ordinary reality. I’ve had the extreme fortune to view some truly beautiful films on truly beautiful film prints- The General with an original organ accompaniment, West Side Story, North by Northwest. It might seem over-stated, but every film deserves to be seen in a theater, and most classics look infinitely better on film.
– Another one of my main arguments for film is that it is highly superior than digital as far as preservation and archival purposes are concerned. Film stays the same, but digital constantly changes. There has yet to be an industry-standard file type, so these can change constantly, meaning that in a few years, many will lose their ability to be opened and seen. Similarly, it’s incredibly easy to accidentally delete files, as happened last year with a screening of The Avengers. As mentioned in a recent Sight & Sound article, there are also numerous more technical problems that can occur when one simply sticks a flash drive with a film on it into a projector. Unless a reel is scratched or catches on fire, it’s pretty much guaranteed to play, unless the projector itself fails. But if a file fails, it can occur for many more reasons, such as incompatibility with the projector, file corruption, etc. While it may be easier to distribute films digitally, it’s much easier to store them on film. There’s also a greater chance that a file could get deleted over time. While there’s still a chance that many great lost films exist in a warehouse somewhere, it’s much easier for digital movies to get buried under a pile of data.
Cons:
– Speaking frankly, film limits who can make movies. It’s hard to come by and is very expensive to purchase and develop. While most kids with cameras might not make anything of real consequence, digital has opened up a realm of possibilities to almost anyone who knows how to point and shoot.
– There are also few projectionists left who actually know how to project or handle film. For example, the only 70mm print of The Master available within the UK was scratched in about a week. But on the opposite side, a lot of projectionists don’t real know anything about digital either.
Digital:
Pros:
– As mentioned earlier, now anyone with a few bucks and a camera can make a movie. The importance of this can’t really be overstated, so I feel like there’s not a whole lot more to write about it.
– The restoration of older films has become infinitely easier now, although it does have its dangers if one becomes careless (see the Sight & Sound review of the poorly-curated and recently-released Alfred Hitchcock anniversary box set, or this article). This means that original details which may have been lost over time can be restored, but it can be easy to overdo this and change the film drastically.
Cons:
– A film theory that I find interesting is remodernism, which in its manifesto calls itself a “stripped down, minimal, lyrical, punk kind of filmmaking.” Basically it calls for a return to the ideals of Japanese concepts like “wabi-sabi (the beauty of imperfection) and mono no aware (the awareness of the transience of things and the bittersweet feelings that accompany their passing),” in order to show the “truth of existence” through the filmmaking of artists like Andrei Tarkovksy, Yasujiro Ozu, and Robert Bresson. Remodernists are essentially opposed to digital filmmaking, but mostly on the grounds that digital attempts to appear like film and has yet to truly achieve its own natural aesthetic. Clay and marble, as well as oil and watercolor, don’t attempt to resemble each other, and I feel it should be the same way with film and digital. One of the few mainstream directors who has created an aesthetic that is to some degree different from film (in my opinion) is Steven Soderbergh, and I think more should follow his efforts.
– As stated above, it’s definitely not ideal for preservation purposes, or even for screening purposes, especially when you consider the carelessness of many projectionists working today, as stated in this essay by Roger Ebert. There are a lot of subtleties regarding light and lenses that go unnoticed by those individuals operating projectors, so digital is really not ideal until those mistakes are corrected.
– This point sort-of builds on my first “pro” for film, but I think that with digital, especially Blu-Ray and high-definition, the dream-like quality of films is lost. Lines become too defined and images too sharp. If you have the chance, I’d recommend David Denby’s recent collection Do the Movies Have a Future?, as he outlines these ideas very clearly, particularly in the essays “Conglomerate Aesthetics: Notes on the Disintegration of Film Language” and “Pirates on the iPod: The Soul of a New Screen.” There’s something about the way colors and textures in film tend to blur together that gives them the feeling of being from a dream, and this is lost when digital attempts to sharpen things and create “reality.” It can be interesting at first, but soon loses its appeal, as images become ordinary and commonplace. The mystery disappears. And don’t even get me started on the pitfalls of watching movies on cellphones and iPods, as it is truly impossible to get a real sense of the “feel” of a movie watching it on these devices. Too many details are lost when one drifts away from the theater. While I understand that it’s impossible to watch everything outside of your own home, we should try to, in a sense, revive the concept of revival theaters, as you really can’t know a movie until your senses have absorbed every inch of detail on the big screen. These devices rob us of the emotional experience of movie-going.
I hope that this very brief outlining of my personal feelings regarding the debate between film and digital makes some sense to you, and I hope you can take these points and gain your opinion on the subject. If more movie-goers are informed about what they’re watching, we take back our power and are no longer the pawns of studios. The audience is crucial in the artistic process and we’ve been abused for too long. Film and digital both have their varying negatives and positives, so it’s a bit difficult to decide which is better. In a perfect world, they could co-exist and live beside each other, but unfortunately the industry has split into camps and forced us to decide on one or the other. I’m weary of this war, so I hope we can attempt to make a change that will improve the state of art overall.
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