The Depredations of Roger Ebert
Indeed, Ebert’s own writings on Citizen Kane provide some valuable insight into just how pedantic and irrelevant Ebert’s observations can be. Orson Welles, as many know, did everything in his power to downplay the significance of the Rosebud twist at the end of his film, and Ebert may well be deferring to this when he notes that “it explains nothing.” A few sentences before, however, he expended a large number of words telling us everything it does explain: “Rosebud is the emblem of the security, hope and innocence of childhood, which a man can spend his life seeking to regain. It is the green light at the end of Gatsby’s pier; the leopard atop Kilimanjaro, seeking nobody knows what; the bone tossed into the air in 2001. It is that yearning after transience that adults learn to suppress.” None of this awful pseudo-poetry amounts to much, and Ebert’s final missive that “it is remarkably satisfactory as a demonstration that nothing can be explained” is nearly incomprehensible, on a par with another of his insights, “A man always seems the same size to himself, because he does not stand where we stand to look at him.”
Ebert is, of course, partially correct in the most banal sense, in that Rosebud, as a simple plot point, is a symbol of lost innocence. But even the most challenged of viewers can realize this within a few seconds of the film’s final shot, and Ebert’s gibbering accomplishes little more than restating this at great length. And his one attempt at a deeper insight is quite simply wrong. The final images of Kane are clearly not a “yearning after transience,” but a lamentation on transience. There is never the slightest indication anywhere in Kane that transience is something to be desired, and the sense of a lost, lamented world is something that runs throughout all of Welles’s work, especially Kane’s immediate successor, the magnificent and mutilated The Magnificent Ambersons.
It is merely sad that Ebert cannot read his favorite film with any degree of accuracy. More problematic, however, is that the banality of his remarks robs his readers of any new insight into or appreciation for one of the most important and influential films ever made. Indeed, Ebert’s entire take on the film can essentially be summarized as follows: “Orson Welles made this movie when he was really young. It has very good photography. It’s all about trying to find out what Rosebud means. But in the end it doesn’t mean anything. Which is kind of a good thing.” This is a caricature, of course, but it is not much exaggerated, and it applies quite well to most of Ebert’s other writings on films both great and small.
To stay with Welles for a moment, Ebert provides a good example when he writes about the director’s last masterpiece, Chimes at Midnight (1965), a variation on Shakespeare’s Falstaff plays. “The scene of the battle of Shrewsbury is justly famous,” he writes. “It lasts fully 10 minutes, chaotic action at a brutal pitch, horses and men confused in smoke and fog, steel crashing against steel, cries of pain, desperate struggles, confused limbs caked in mud and blood, men falling exhausted or dead.” This is, again, accurate so far as it goes. It explains next to nothing, however, about what may be the greatest and certainly one of the most influential battle scenes ever filmed.
Silly but quite enjoyable Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? Really? Then you attempt wax philosophical for two long, torturous pages about how I’m to interpret Rosebud, and Kurosawa’s battle scenes, but for all your art appreciation snobbery I cannot divorce myself from the fact that you referred to a movie that is completely without merit; a movie devoid of anything original, a movie so banal, and purposefully sensory assaulting, as enjoyable.
Ok, where to start ?
1. I guess you never actually did read any critic written by a French cinema critic because you would never have dared to say what you said about them. French critic are a caricature of themselves, writing critics that nobody can even start to understand in the most pedantic language ever invented and meaning absolutely nothing just to show off how much they are intelligent. Nobody in France gives a shit about the French critics. They are crazy.
2. Transformers 2 is indeed a threat to the brain of any normal human being.
3. What do we expect from movie critics ? To tell us if the movie is good or not, if it is entertaining, intelligent, well acted. I don’t care what the movie says about cinema or society or whatever when I read a critic. I care *after* I have watched the movie, if it was good enough that I want to have a discussion about it. And for that I have discussion groups on the internet.
benjamin,
I have to disagree with your critique of the article. Firstly, because I don’t think a person who could utter such absolute nonsense as “it is remarkably satisfactory as a demonstration that nothing can be explained” and “a man always seems the same size to himself, because he does not stand where we stand to look at him” is qualified to judge whether a film is intelligent or not. But secondly, and more importantly, because I want to be able to say that I’ve criticized someone who was criticizing someone who was criticizing a critic. Although now that I think of it, I could have find another commenter being criticized, and then I could criticize someone who is criticizing someone who is criticizing someone who is criticizing a critic, and I may be able to do even better than that…….hmmmm…..well I think this will do.
benjamin (at comment # 2, not Kerstein) makes a clueless point about the French wave and French critics. Of course, it is ridiculous in the first place to lump all French critics together, just like it is ridiculous to lump White with Ebert and the few thousands of more or less amateurish American critics around.
The contribution of the French was to separate criticism, which is an inward-looking approach to telling what films say about each other and how they cumulate as an art, from reviewing, which is about telling the audience what they will or will not get from a specific movie as a unique entertainment experience.
Failing to make this distinction is the problem in White’s whine, and to some extent in Benjamin Kerstein’s piece.
Anyone with a clue about the French wave and Les Cahiers du Cinema would know better than to make an ignorant comment like # 2, but would also see through the tiresome and fallacious arguments between high-priest and low-priest American writers, who are simply 50 years behind in their confused dual pretenses.
I am French and I have to say that Benjamin, far from ignorant, is quite right: French movie criticism as practiced and made famous by the New Wave and its followers is unreadable, undecipherable and useless blather, accounting for the boring awfulness of most of what passes for cinema here (and gets inevitably extolled by American critics, i.e., Téchiné, Assayas, Kéchiche, etc) The New Wave was a catastrophe on almost every level, but criticism is certainly the most unforgivable one.
Quibble: I took Ebert’s phrase “yearning after transience” to mean yearning (in the moments immediately after the high departs) for the high that was so transient, not yearning for the transience itself. As I interpret the words, it is precisely the lamentation on transience the author thinks that Ebert missed.
Otherwise, an excellent excoriation of Ebert.
Hardly a quibble.
Film critics (especially those with their own shows, for which ads are sold and millions of people are expected to suspend their daily lives and give their attention to) always strike me as incredibly infantile! “It’s all about what I think!” “I don’t like you! Go away!” “I do like you. Please me some more!”
Several years ago there was an amazingly silly feature than ran semi-regularly on the Jim Lehrer Evening News/PBS in which a career “journalist” interviewed other career “journalists” on “things about journalism”. It was a knockoff of the Oscars, I guess, where “we all get together to talk about us, how we are doing, what we are doing, what we think of each other, give each other pretty stars for how great we are, applaud ourselves and then go to a party we throw for ourselves….and we take pictures to dispense to the breathless world, showing them what they weren’t invited to.”
Of course, not having been in a movie theatre for at least 19 years, who am I to judge.
Well said.
Oh good grief. You mean, Roger Ebert is not a nouvelle vague French flim critic explaining how all cinema says something about cinema? How terrible!
I suggest thinking of Roger Ebert as a film reviewer rather than a film critic. If he can guide his readers to a movie they will enjoy or away from a movie that they won’t, then he has done his job.
But no, Ebert is not a guy writing deep think pieces about film. Such a critic would likely be useless to most people, such as myself, who are looking to watch movies for enjoyment, not to discover what cinema has to say about cinema.
My thoughts exactly. Ebert writes reviews for movie-goers on the assumption that the reader has not yet seen the movie. He wont give away certain details, and certainly not the ending.
To compare him to critics who write long essays on cinematic technique is like comparing a Madison Avenue jingle writer to a symphony composer.
Ebert plays his role, and he is widely read. But, to say the he “destroyed film criticism” just because he is widely thought as the quinessential movie reviewer is more of a comment on what he thinks of his reputation (i.e. calling him over-rated) rather than a critique of Ebert’s actual abilities as the movie reviewer that he is.
Right, so let’s just be aware that Ebert’s perhaps more a reviewer than a critic. And we’re more cinephiles than critics ourselves. But why should we want to stay always in the shallow end of the pool?
To me, there have always been a) movie critics and b) movie reviewers. The former was or is made up of such folks as Kael, Sarris, Simon, Kauffmann, etc. while someone like Roger Ebert is a supreme example of the latter, along with the likes of his late colleague, Gene Siskel, and more than 90 percent of writers who criticize movies on a regular basis. I accept Ebert for what he is; I don’t think I have any illusions about what he isn’t. As for the idea that he has “destroyed” film criticism, that would imply an inordinate degree of influence which I frankly don’t see.
I must admit, this is the very first time I’ve heard of this Armond White; I must look into him. I can’t help wondering if Mr. White is trying to follow in the footsteps of Pauline Kael by turning Robert Ebert into his own version of Bosley Crowther; it’s one way of building a critical reputation.
One real problem with Ebert’s work is that he injects his Socialist politics into almost any review he can.
We don’t have to decide which movie’s worth hitching up the wagon for, anymore. DVDs. Downloads. Who needs a film critic, when it’s as easy as, “If I don’t like it, I hit stop and play a different one?”
I have learned that if Ebert likes a movie I probably won’t & vice versa.
Something else about Ebert is that he is very politically biased. If the movie has a conservative message he is going to give the worst review he can get away with. If it has a liberal one he is going to praise it.
Bingo! You nailed it better than either the author of the article or any of the commentators. If a movie is loaded with ‘progressive’ claptrap – Ebert loves it. If the movie promotes family values, patriotism, American greatness, true heroism, or even a faintly conservative message – Ebert hates it. A thumbs up merely means the flick is suitably liberal – absolutely nothing more.
Ebert was one of the few reviewers who gave a good review to The Passion of the Christ.
is The Life of David Gale a liberal film?
Is that good or bad?
Roger Ebert is the Barney Frank of film reviewers. He is not just biased. He is dishonest and aggressively mean if something about a film dares to violate his tiny world view. He becomes a ranting curmudgeon, who like most of Hollywood today, is long on preaching what the enlightened and tolerant views of films should be, but very short on exhibiting tolerance or a shred of open mindedness himself. He has abjectly failed to even see, let alone comment on, the rot that has rendered the Hollywood film industry incapable of producing films people would want to watch, or films that are enlightening or at least entertaining, rather than preachy commercials for the destruction of traditional values.
Ebert is pretty mild on the bias thing. For example, he was one of the few positive reviewers of The Passion of the Christ.
The one thing that sticks with me from many Sunday afternoons watching Sneak Previews as a kid was how often Ebert (as noted in the article) would do little more than give detailed descriptions of movies, which viewers may have been able to do themselves, but also gild his descriptions with comparisons – legit or not I couldn’t say – with revered foreign directors whose work few American moviegoers would have EVER heard of. Siskel may well have done the same thing, I can’t recall now. But Ebert did, often.
But of course we overlook the fact that almost no one cares what film critics think. Then again, maybe Ebert is part of why. True film criticism i smore for the film makr than the film viewer. Most patrons simply want to go live a few hours of fantsy and could not care less about what the ‘elites’ think.
I didn’t see Avavtar despite glowing reviews (except on PJTV) because it has a simplistic ‘government-humans-military bad, savages good’ / ‘Dances with Wolves’ plot. But when I talked to all of my family. friends and co-workers who did see it and i discussed he political message Cameron inserted, ll I got worry puzzled looks.
All I got was “But it looked so cool”, “the special effects were wild and the action scenes were exciting”. “It was cooool”. No one got Cameron’s anti-American messsage. I love it.
I find it to almost be just desserts when a filmmaker tries to sledgehammer the audience with a POLITICAL MESSAGE they deem IMPORTANT, and the majority of the movie-going public completely ignores it.
I always pictured Verhoeven gnashing his teeth because audiences loved his awful reinterpretation of Starship Troopers, but they completely missed the intended message and only liked it for the explosions and T&A.
“Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” – Sam Goldwyn
Just as true today as it was when he said it.
Maybe you got puzzled looks from your friends because of the tiresome way you see everything in the context of a political struggle between the good conservatives and the evil liberals?
I think it’s funny that you feel qualified to opine about “Cameron’s anti-American messsage” when you admit that you haven’t even seen the film. Talk about a knee jerk.
I did see “Avatar,” and found it atrocious. To call the plot Dances with Smurfsis an affront to smurfs and the smurfettes that love them. The anti-Americanism and racism is appalling. Leave it up to a liberal to use the John Wayne character as the personification of evil and bigotry! And the whimpy “hero” finds salvation thru a Race Change Operation that leaves him colored. Really??
Add in obviously computer generated effects, and what you have is a puritanically shrill liberal scold of a bigoted, unAmerican movie. I give it thumbs down, WAY down.
I’m not entirely convinced. First and foremost, there is a huge difference between a movie reviewer, whose job is largely to tell a general audience why a movie is or isn’t worth going to see, and a film critic writing for a more demanding audience interested in getting a deeper understanding of a film they’ve likely already seen. On the whole, Ebert is a competent practitioner of the first métier. It is scarcely his fault if the popular press has conflated the two, so that now any ordinary reviewer is titled a critic—to the annoyance of Mr. White and his ilk. And as for whether or not Ebert has “the training,” I think it’s only fair to note that when Ebert got started in the ’60s, the “training” was almost all a self-taught affair that largely consisted of seeing a lot of movies and trying to think about them—the academic film studies vogue was at best a recently sprouted seed.
Boy! Critics, good and bad, sure know how to mess up a good flick, don’t they.
It seems to me that this article does exactly what the author accuses Ebert of doing…
Ebert did this and then Ebert did that.
In a continuing effort to live down to the standard that I have set for myself, let me also point out that Ebert is a drooling nitwit and moral midget. Kerstein might have targeted our sickening media culture for elevating this twit so far above his own talents, in addition to detailing Ebert’s intellectual bankruptcy.
Moviegoers basically rely on a film critic’s judgement to decide whether it is worth the trouble and expense of going to a movie theater to watch a particular film. For most people the only reason for reading a movie review is this purely utilitarian function. Back when Siskel and Ebert were on the air, I began to realize the whenever there was a disagreement over a film, I had tended not to like the high-brow films that Siskel recommended and Ebert didn’t like, and conversely I usually liked the films that Ebert liked and Siskel didn’t. And so I’ve relied on Ebert’s opinion ever since. Anything less than three stars is probably not worth seeing, and anything rated four stars definitely is.
A critic’s job should be to deepen an audience’s understanding and appreciation of whatever it is the critic is observing, much like the best moviegoing companion does after the film. “You can’t outrun an explosion” does not do this. Neither does a bunch of liberal pablum, which Ebert is also known for spouting. Kerstein has put his finger on what bugged me about Ebert all this time (besides the liberal slant) – what is sad is that I should have seen it myself. But the state of movie criticism is such that most critics are Ebert-like, not Kerstein-like.
I do wonder what alternate critics Kerstein would recommend to someone like me, a written-word storyteller who has a deep appreciation for the alternate storytelling methods in cinema?
“Breathless”. “The 400 Blows”.
I went to see them because Dwight McDonald praised them in Esquire (at a time way back when Esquire was a pretty interesting magazine.)
Breathless left me out of breath from yawning. The 400 Blows blew all right. Dull, duller, dullest. It may be, probably was, that I was too young and unsophisticated to perceive their greatness. I viwed them as Tom Wolfe views abstract art, a kind of scam on the over-arty set. To paraphrase acerbic but ultra-funny critic John Simon, I had been out of my depth before, but seeing these movies made me feel that I was out of my shallowness.
“one could just as easily point out that no one is actually in the room to hear Kane’s last words that set the whole film in motion.”
Classic.
Kerstein (and White) are “film” people and know the story Charlton Heston told a reporter about someone coming up to Welles on the set of “Touch Of Evil” and pointing out that plot hole (“Shhh,” Heston recalled Welles telling the fan, “You must never repeat what you just said!”)
Ebert (like me and like most people) is “movie” person and I’m sure actually watched the movie, rather than relying on third-hand cinéaste gossip. The butler, Raymond, mentions overhearing the last words.
Except for the fact that, if you actually watch the movie, Raymond is nowhere to be seen during the opening depiction of Kane’s death.
Why’s that? Because he’s not shown in the particular shot of that area of the room? How do you think the maid rushed to him after hearing the globe break if there was no one around?
Who knows or cares? which was my point in the first place.
Obviously everyone missed the fact that Kane had his intercom stuck on the “On” position, and the butler, like Bell’s Watson, heard the final word over the Intercom. Plot hole closed.
Siskel was the one person who could keep Ebert on task. After Siskel died, we’ve been treated to Ebert unhinged. Yuck.
The reason I often watch people like Ebert are to just get a general sense of what a movie is about, not Criticism with a capital “c”. I don’t expect anything close to intellectual acuity in a commercial TV format, just a description of plot, characters and theme of a current movie. Besides being ideologically liberal, Ebert is often surprisingly obtuse and childlike. We take that for granted. I think Ebert is a guy who was enthralled by movies when he was a kid and continues to try to relive that fascination. So he judges all films on how much a movie will make him feel like a kid again. He gets the simplest things wrong. Once he was reviewing a movie about Mars (can’t remember whether it was “Red Planet” or “Mission to Mars”) the Explorers were sent to Mars from the mother ship and landed in huge inflatable spheres which bounced on the ground and finally came to rest safely landing the humans on the surface. Ebert went on about how absurd such a scheme was and how it couldn’t possible work. He never knew that only a few months earlier a Mars Rover was successfully landed on Mars using exactly the same technique.
I don’t think anybody ever took Ebert for a critic except the phony liberals who hang out around film festivals and now he and his ilk are no longer needed. All you have to do now is look up the user reviews on the Internet Movie Database. There you can get a profusion of perspectives on any film new or old, often by very knowledgeable and intelligent movie lovers–none of which is actual “Film Criticism” (capital F and C) but which do a much better job of describing what a movie is about and whether you might want to see it. “Transformers” indeed. Of course Ebert doesn’t “get” Kurosawa, he’s just a kid stuffing Good & Plenty into his fat face.
I think Ebert came up with one valid point (or was it Siskel?) that if all the dilemmas the characters in a movie face could be solved right away if only the characters were as intelligent as the average movie goer, then that movie is a very bad movie. Not a great insight, but the fact of the matter is that many, many movies have characters who are as dumb as a sack of nails. At least, Ebert seems to be saying, movies should be as intelligent as the average moviegoer.
I’m not sure Roger Ebert destroyed film criticism (as opposed to book-club-type movie reviewing). If it’s destroyed — and I don’t grant that — the whole culture has colluded in it. The level of interest the public has in reading criticism of cinematic art has declined, perhaps, with the video form approaching a contemptible ubiquity today and attention spans shortening. How profitable is it now for publications to pay critics of cinematic art?
On the other hand, how profitable was it ever? I think most publishers and editors, as well as video media moguls, are more interested in a good balance from their movie reviewers. I read Ross Douthat at NR, for example, and he frequently combines discussion of cinematic art and methodology with more Ebert-like references to plot, casting, and social — er — relevance. But he has to keep it short, so no one facet of the criticism surges to the fore or wanders into juicy, intellectually exalting territory. That said, it’s usually a satisfying read. I can say the same of John Simon, who was my favorite film critic for many years.
I agree that Ebert is largely banal as a critic, but commercially successful criticism of any storytelling form usually is. To get more than that, you typically have to just pay $300 an hour and take a graduate seminar.
Regarding “Transformers 2,” lets keep in mind that it is about giant robots from outer space blasting each other into tiny bits with ray guns. There is absolutely nothing uplifting, intellectual, or spiritual about it. It was not made to be any of those things. It was made to be FUN!, and it succeeds in that; I haven’t seen “Avatar,” but I suspect that FUN! was the point of that movie also. I’ve read a lot of film reviews, and have known and worked with a lot of movie buffs, and I’ve noticed that many of them can’t seem to comprehend that the average person wants to have some FUN! when they go into a theater, rather than be preached at by the leftist/rightist movie maker (or, for that matter, the leftist/rightist critic before they go in).
Yes, film critics can be pretty pedantic. Just ignore them, and enjoy yourself with an entertaining movie that you enjoy.
And yet, with TF2, if you know about about history there are some interesting things to consider regarding opposing evil. The aircraft chosen in the Simthsonian scene makes one wonder if they were deliberately chosen by Bay for something for the adults to consider while their kids enjoyed the robots and explosions.
Of course, the Enola Gay which is shown twice, invokes the end of WWII and the cost, the lengths the allies ended up going to to oppose the Japanese.
The P-40 Warhawk and it’s relation to both the mercenary American Volunteer Group (aka The Flying Tigers) who fought against the Japanese prior to the US entering the War, and the P-40′s role at Pearl Harbor can lead to some interesting thoughts on preparation and will to oppose evil.
The names for the US Navy ships featured in the films is interesting as well. Theodore Roosevelt, Stennis, Kidd (SOPA Pearl Harbord and senior officer killed there). If you know much about these folks it says quite a bit about perpration, determination and commitment to opposing evil.
The choice of the SR71 Blackbird spyplane as the old robot is interesting given the Blackbirds role in the Cold War, the investment the US made in men and material during the Cold War.
Anything done on TV is an infomercial.
Roger Ebert is nothing more than Billy Mays in drag.
Exactly.
Is the cinema, or film if you prefer, an art form or a business? This is not easily answered by saying it’s a bit of both. Because the fact is that if you consider it to be an art form and then proceed to attempt to make films, or even judge them as works of art, you are immediately brought up against the fact that film is a business that caters to those who just want to be “entertained” (witness most of the comments on this thread) and that fact makes you (the believer in film as art) marginal at best. To be blunt the man or woman who wants to be an artist in film is more likely, far more likely, to fail financially than succeed. The one or two film “career” is the norm. Maybe I should back up and try to define what film as art means. Put simply it means the attempt to say something about “life” in UNFORMULAIC terms. This is what all art does when it is successful. But this is very hard to do. Because to be successful the film as art must say something central, not wierd, about life but say it in new language (visual language). And new language is always resisted by those, the great majority, who want to be entertained…at least at first. Given the economics of filmmaking it is close to miraculous that any films as art get made at all.
Give Ebert a movie about black kids playing basketball and rising up out of the slums and he will wet himself with excitement. Doesn’t matter whether the movie is good or bad, Ol’ Roger will love it.
I think everyone agrees with you that Hoop Dreams was a TERRIBLE movie. Just the stupidest pile of dung ever to be made. Ebert was alone in his praise for this movie when it came out, and history has proven him wrong. if you try to watch that movie now adays its like “who are these black kids playing basketball?” “why did ebert get so wet about it.” and its hard to watch.
Transformers was made to entertain the kiddies in us – and make the subwoofer pound the foundation of the house down a few mm. Citizen Kane (rated 8.6 IMDB – personal rating 8.0) was a good movie but IMO there are better – Casablanca comes to mind (IMDB rated 8.8 – personal rating 9). Perhaps Ebert sees something of himself in Citizen Kane – who knows but Ebert.
I’ve pretty much ignored Siskel & Ebert after reading a few of their reviews years ago. I was left wondering if they had seen the same movie as I had on many of them.
FWIW my all-time favorite is Twelve Angry Men.
http://www.imdb.com/chart/top
I could never pick a favorite movie. There are too many categories and trying to compare movies from different genres (sp?) is apples to oranges. I agree that Twelve Angry Men was fantastic- I only saw it once in high school and still remember it!!
TF2 was what it was – a CGI extravaganza to entertain the kiddies and adults with eye-candy. (see post above- knowing a lot of WWII/aviation history I took more from it but I don’t think that was Bay’s point).
How can one compare comedies against dramas? Does that make them less worthwhile? No, I still love the old Marx Brothers stuff and it’s been fun introducing my kids and their friends to them.
Car chase movies? Dumb, mindless entertainment. But I can’t help but like some of them- Vanishing Point comes to mind.
Action Adventure. Some great films. But I can’t compare them to dramas.
Horror. I can’t stand this genre having read too many true crime stories. But, I’m sure there must be some fantastic films in here somewhere along with the dross.
I think everyone has a film they know they really shouldn’t like but can’t help themselves. Mine is The Replacements with Keanu Reeves. I would never defend it as great cinema, but… Heck, I like it. A lot.
Long way of saying that Ebert is a reviewer. Like anyone else he brings his prejudices into his comments. If you have similar taste, he’s helpful in deciding which movie to see. But he’s never going to dispassionately assess and breakdown a film into its components and keeping in mind the intent and purpose of the folks who made the film.
As others have so aptly pointed out, Ebert is not a film critic, but a film reviewer. Yet, he tries to aspire to be one as is noted by the article, and he’s just not very good at it. And even as a film reviewer, he’s lost in his own little world.
Two movies I saw before I read his reviews that bore this out to me were late 90′s flicks out at the same time. Ronin came out and is a well made movie with a terrific twist at the end. Ebert completely missed the twist and panned the movie because he wanted to KNOW, what was in the BOX, which was never revealed. The box was never the point about the movie other than to lead the hero after his real objective. It was a Hitchcocking Maguffin at its best.
The other movie, also about a loner in a changing world, and entertaining, was Mel Gibson’s Payback. A great caricature of Gangster/Mob movies lampooned perfectly by Gibson. Ebert thought it was just a dumb movie about revenge and overlooked all the nuance of why the movie was so entertaining on different levels.
Ebert’s failure to understand either movie for what it really was showed me long ago that even as a reviewer, Ebert was not up to the job.
I have to go with people like Ken Spiker and the others above–Ebert can be quite useful if you look at him as a reviewer, not as a critic. That’s why I read him. If I want to know about film history and theory there are plenty of places to find that.
What I want out of a movie reviewer is basically to know what’s the movie about, who’s in it, and do I want to go see it? (And if I want to see it, do I want to see it now or wait and see if it shows up at the local buck-fifty second run house.) That sort of information Ebert conveys well enough, with the caveat, as mentioned above, that if there is a political slant to the movie you have to discount what he says.
“…as mentioned above, that if there is a political slant to the movie you have to discount what he says.”
Unless you sympathize with his politics, in which case you know that there’s something there for you to enjoy.
He’s also dazzled by fancy visuals and will rate movies with fancy visuals highly even if the script and acting are garbage.
But if you’re also dazzled by fancy visuals, he’ll let you know that this is the movie for you.
Sometimes we like the same movies, sometimes we don’t. But knowing our differences, I can usually guess what I’m going to think of a movie based on what he says about it. Ebert’s been around long enough, and I’ve been reading him long enough, that I can calibrate. There is some value in that.
The Depredations of Roger Ebert; Did he destroy film criticism ?
No, but the Liberal Left’s ‘Long March’ through academia has
destroyed the critical faculty in the majority of Americans.
The distinction between Critic and Reviewer is better unmade;
One person should be able to describe all the levels of
meaning, and entertainment, in a movie, and notice, but not
necessarily remark on, trivial in-jokes, such as the last words
of Lady Kaede’s character in ‘Ran’ echoing on the lips of Trinity
in Matrix III.
Roger Ebert always irked me, and for years I did not know why. He seemed simultaneously convinced of his own imaginative and intellectual superiority and decidedly NOT superior in those areas.
Recently, I suppose in an emotional dump after facing death and experience painful life change, he revealed that he is– A HATEFUL LEFTIST. Bush lied, people died, no blood for oil, bitter clingers to guns and the bible, yada yada blah blah. He is right out of the Obama cabinet room.
At least now I know where my nagging sense of being irritated by him comes from.
Yet another man of the left who would dismiss with insult a perfectly rational, compassionate, experienced, visionary fellow such as myself, because I am not armed with the degrees from the appropriate academic leftist factories, and because I dare to occasionally speak up and thus not “know my place”.
But I do. My place is to close my ears to being lectured by the likes of Ebert. About movies or anything else. I am sorry for his suffering, but my disgust for his character is unabated by my compassion for his condition and suffering.
Years ago, my husband and I went to see “My Dinner with Andre” because of Siskel and Ebert’s review. They had basically never seen a movie more wonderful.
That’s the last time we listened to Ebert.
Ebert tastes are that of an ordinary, decently-education, sentimental and left-wing baby boomer. If that’s your kind of thing then he’s insightful, or will speak to you, I suppose.
his thumbs have been stuck up his A$$ too long.
Ebert has also had this love-hate relationship with common people and tastes. When he gets slammed as a middle-brow or low-brow tv critic he’s quick to champion “the people” and their tastes, for better or worse, but you can also read in his reviews an aspiration to be considered a member of an intellectual or cultural elite.
So an egalitarian when he’s in over his head, but a believer in hierarchy when he thinks he’ll be a part of the elite.
Much if not all of what you say of him is true but the claim that he has ruined criticism sounds like sour grapes to me. I don’t thing the average viewer wanted to hear about film or be educated. He wanted to be able to spend his hard earned money on good films instead of wasting them on the bad ones. I think that’s how Ebert imagined his role. Why expect more? I don’t expect Keanu Reeves to be able to act. He can’t. But he hasn’t “ruined acting.”
Well, I love Armond White, mostly because he departs from the conventional wisdom. Plus, he loved Open Water and said it made him want to weep when he thinks of it. Me too.
Ebert is famous because he had a new type of show. End of story. He does lack the ability to critique a movie, and so IMHO resorts to polemics based on how liberal/conservative a movie is.
Ebert destroyed film criticism because others saw that he received praise, fame and wealth for what he did. Other wannabe critics emulated Ebert’s leftist views which made their way into his reviews. They ‘dumbed down’ actual analysis of films to be more like Ebert in the hopes that they too will be given access to the upper echelons of Hollywood and the MSM.
“Ebert’s theory of cinema in effect amounts to little more than “I liked this, I didn’t like that.” Or, perhaps, “This happened, and I liked it. Then this happened, and I didn’t like it.””
Right, that’s what his readers expect of him. In fact, your heavy-handed and pretentious diatribe about the “responsibility of the critic” aside, the entire job of the film critic (or the critic of any popular media) is to assess something, give an opinion of it, and back up that opinion with some examples about what the reviewer liked or disliked about it.
“This is cataloguing, not criticism, and while it may lend itself to the fast-food style of movie reviewing that assigns stars and a thumbs up or down, it abdicates entirely the role and responsibility of the critic, which is to discern what the object of his criticism is, what it says about itself and its medium, and what it says, also, about we who are witnessing it and the society that created it.”
Oh spare me. Do you seriously expect someone to watch the latest meatheaded summer blockbuster action film or Julia Roberts romantic comedy and explain “what it says about itself and its medium [and] we who are witnessing it and the society that created it”? I’m sorry to inform you that not every movie is Apocalypse Now or Citizen Kane, and in fact very few movies have anything meaningful to say. For that matter, would you expect the average newspaper reader to be at all interested in some long-winded exposition about the symbolism and societal meaning of a movie that they’re going to forget about a week after watching? A movie critic is not an academic. There is a place for the kind of in-depth analysis you seek, but it’s not the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times, it’s a masters thesis in a liberal arts discipline.
Ebert’s always seem like more of a reviewer than a critic to me, and I’d guess he’d admit as much. I’m not an Ebert fan, but what’s the point of this article, really? If the writer is bewailing the lack of respect for film criticism, which seems to me to be the case, he’d probably be better off in academia, assuming he’s got a PhD.
He is trite, ill-informed of politics, religion and science, yet he thinks himself intelligent and superior. His reviews applaud homosexuality and socialism, all the rest is cover.
Just because Orson Welles downplays Rosebud doesn’t mean the Rosebud is insignificant. Welles point of view as a director/actor is not the same as the viewer.
It is important to know Ebert’s liberal bias, but that is not to say that Ebert isn’t a great film critic. He simply is. Michael Medved could have been a great conservative film critic. I think the two of them together would be fantastic.
By the way, Roger Ebert did not suffer from a “botched operation. He suffered from an adenoid cystic carcinoma. It is a rare cancer that is resistant to chemotherapy and standard radiation therapy. He underwent neutron beam radiation therapy which unfortunately has a side effect of melting away the mandible in a not small number of cases.
Everything I’ve read about his illness has stated that his lower jaw had to be removed because of damage to an artery that occurred during surgery.
Pretty tough on the old boy, eh? Ebert is a sorry lot, but his work requirement undoubtedly required him to provide short, clear, intelligent and timely comments that are relevant to 300 million divergent persons weekly. His purpose was not to provide America with an on-air ‘Film Critique 101′ class. His purpose was to let a huge public audience know which of perhaps a dozen wide release films was worth watching, and more generally provide at lease some description of the film, etc. Expecting Ebert to taste like beef filet is crazy, when you know his packaging says Spam. It seems to me that the issue is not Ebert; it is the fact that such ‘low brow’ film review/critique TV shows and columns even exist. Ebert just did his job as instructed. I think your problem is he did it too well, and that the job should not have even been created in the first place. By analogy, you think that, if all beef products cannot taste like filet, they should be banned. Frankly, it is a big world out there and there are 10′s of millions that have found significant value in Ebert’s comments. It may taste like Spam, but not every has the facilities and desire to have filet all the time. Lighten up. If all reviewers set the bar so low, then I would be concerned. You comment however is almost a personal attack, when the issue is whether ‘low brow’ reviews (whether from Ebert or any one else) are useful. I think they are; you do not. Finally, I think Ebert is liberal and subject to ‘fads’ in politics and fashion. As a result, I rarely enjoy his comments and like you do not find them useful. That said, I am happy for the Spam eaters to dine, as they have to eat something!
I agree with everything that guy said about Roger Ebert.
now Buy My Book.
Buy My Book.
Buy My Book.
Jay Sherman
“The Critic”
Ebert gave a “thumbs up” to Speed 2. So, he is either incompetent or on the take. He is also an angry, ignorant leftist of the worst kind.
I love Roger Ebert.
Yet I agree with this article.
I found transformers 2 silly, and formulaic.
But I enjoyed transformers 2 greatly.
I do find some of Ebert’s reviews humorous in their attempts to find meaning within something only designed as a facade, and I find others to be quite insightful in terms of the psychological impact made on the viewer from a case study perspective.
Ebert is. This Article is. I enjoyed them both, and thus am happy that both exist for me this day.
As for the man’s politics, I find that modern progressiveism is generally associated with ignorance and a lack of logical reasoning.
When people ask me: why do bad things happen to good people, my answer is: ignorance. A failure to consider and take into account the consequences of one’s actions.
For instance, I believe that Global Warming is a fraud. and that the irony of “green” ignorance is that billions of dollars have been diverted to “stop carbon release” while ignoring legitimate issues of waste reclamation and improvement, recycling, animal conservation, and preventing the release of legitimate polutants.
So in aiding al gore and his ignorant flock, Ebert’s ignorance of such things as “The urban heat island’s effect on localized weather apparatus as a cause for confidence interval degredation in accurate depictions of thermal data” thus effect their damage.
Does this mean that ebert is an ignoramus? no. It merely highlights the dangers of taking a political opinion without having sufficient data.
If someone asked me “Do you want to see the earth get so hot due to CO2 that it floods” my response would be: of course not. But neither do I want to have aliens replace my parents in a poorly written quest to find and eat copper.
I find both options equally unlikely, but if Al Gore held the political position that we now needed to stockpile copper for an alien trap, then I would think him a fool.
Because our resources are finite, and cannot be wasted on ignorant acts like preventing co2 release.
Its laughable until you realize what good could have been done, and was not done, with the resources wasted on trying to prevent the release of a non-polutant gas.
But I digress.
Ebert is a fine reviewer, and a reasonable critic. His politics are that of the logicless public ignorant of TRUE science beyond the high school/collegate-intro level, but his heart is in the right place.
Anyone, ANYONE, who went to Transformers 2 thinking they were going to see an Oscar Best Picture was and is a fool..
Those types of movies are what they are brainless entertainment for those who either grow up with the cartoon version or wanted 2 hrs to waste.
I am sure none of the people who saw that movie or others like it (A-Team for example) knew what they were going to see and could care less what any reviewer had to say on the subject.
Ebert has long since been relevant to me on any movie he reviews, for a couple of reasons;
1. He now thinks his political views are what people care about,
2. When Siskel passed away.
Anyone who goes to see a movie or not see a movie based on what any reviewer thinks is an ignorant fool, just because 1 person does not like a movie doesn’t mean you wont, its all about opinions, which
everyone has and not all share the same.
Now I go and wait for Alvin and the Chipmunks 3
You want honest movie reviews? Then you need only check out Joe Bob Briggs. Nuff said!
I read Ebert’s review of Seven Samurai a few years ago. Ebert (you can read the review)was pretty instructive about K’s innovative techniques of cinematography, his character development, and other nuances of the film. Having said that, I got a lot more out of this film critic’s discussion. Which is what you want from a film critic–you want to be able to see deeper into the movie, to appreciate what you are seeing and to grow in your ability to do the same. Deepening our ability to appreciate art is the subject of a good book called “All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes”, btw.
Honestly, is it the quality of Ebert’s reviews that prompted this lengthy smear, or is it his annoyingly leftist politics? When Ebert writes one of his purely political opinion pieces, I have to admit he annoys me, more often than not.
When he reviews a film, I think he’s quite good at his job, giving me reasons why I might or might not want to see it. Yes, he’s writing for a mass audience, poor lowbrows like me. So what? I like his ability to take a film on its own terms; he can appreciate good trash as well as the next guy. That just doesn’t mean he has to like a particular piece of trash. I haven’t seen “Transformers 2″, but surely giving it a bad review isn’t crossing the line.
Wow, Ben Kerstein,
if you’re going to mock someone’s written work this haughtily while using words like “missive,” how about, you know, having a friggin’ clue what the word means? It’s been a while since I stumbled on the work of a writer with such an undeservedly inflated view of his own superiority as you have; I wish I could say there’s some fun in it, but it’s just embarrassing.
And, for the record, I don’t say this as a defender of Ebert; I haven’t had the stomach to read his reviews for quite some time.
A reviewer is there to tell you, is the movie worth seeing in theatrical ($12 or more per person), a rental, or not at all? Ebert is a reviewer.
A critic is there to tell you, this movie did something innovative in terms of storytelling, with time, or space, or visuals, and is therefore worth seeing if you have a chance just for the quality of the craftsmanship. Even if its “a dumb action movie” the way Die Hard was in 1988, or “a silly comedy” like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, or “an over-the-top monstrosity” like Ghostbusters, still holding up today.
A critic will tell you, you may or may not like the whole movie, but things in it are worth seeing the movie, for a performance, or uniquely good craftsmanship in storytelling, or something entirely new. Like, say, Memento, or Dark City, or World’s Fastest Indian, or even say, Ghostrider.
Now, was Ghostrider cheezy? Sure. But per White, its worth seeing because Nick Cage plays an off-beat guy, an ADULT, who does an adult’s job, in a weird, loopy way, letting you see how his immortality affects him (he drinks hot coffee right out of the pot), and with a predictably masterful performance by a great Actor, Peter Fonda, as one of the villains. It also has the great Donal Logue in a small but key part.
A reviewer would tell you, don’t waste your money, not enough fun. A critic would tell you, up to you to decide, but if you do here is what is interesting, or well performed, or well photographed, or unique.
In addition, a critic is supposed to EXPLAIN why a film has emotional power over people who see it, or doesn’t. Why say, a film like POSSE retains its emotional power (because the “villain” becomes the hero by becoming human, as the “hero” becomes the villain by losing his humanity and empathy and sense of justice), and a film like Open Range or Wyatt Earp just does not hold up.
So yeah, I’ll go with White. He may be a pompous jerk, but he’s right. Films are uniquely emotionally powerful, people ought to know the tricks and techniques that film-makers use to evoke emotion or not.
This is sadly an accurate assessment of Ebert’s mental prowess, or lack thereof. A while back he also did a similarly mindless defense of evolution likewise demonstrating his usual egotism without regard to the truth or reality of its bogus fascist nature founded on deranged antiChristian bigotry shared by Hitler and Stalin and now controlling modern elites (overwhelmingly reflexively Democrat, like Ebert) so deluded as to imagine themselves to be independent thinkers (easily refuted at http://www.trueorigin.org), like Democrats who blame Bush for the pathetic fact that they themselves can’t do anything constructive themselves, only criticize others who do, while hypocritically pretending Republicans are mere naysayers.
An excellent read. Thank you, Mr. Kerstein.
I stopped watching and reading Ebert years ago. He was just too tedious and predictable.
The point I wish to make is that television, being the “cool medium”, requires little thought and introspection on the viewer’s part while the written word is more studied and thorough – usually.
That’s why Ebert has prospered I believe … He gives the viewer’s what they want in a brief period of time.
Oh, and “Rosebud” is the name of one of our dogs.
~(Ä)~
Well, I enjoyed the article very much, Mr Kerstein. I haven’t seen a huge number of Ebert’s reviews, but his observations often struck me as both mean and dumb.
If anything has destroyed movie criticism, though, it’s the usual suspect — the internet. If I want to know if a film is worth seeing — which is the reason most people tune into reviews — I nearly always agree with the aggregate “user” rating more than the professional critic’s.
Ebert did what most want reviewers to do and tell me which movies I might enjoy seeing. His ‘reviews’, not ‘criticisms’ were spot on in the early years and he saved me a lot of money; but when he interjected his politics into his reviews, he lost much of his credibility.
Who is this Kerstein? He sounds like a petty, jealous bitter ‘old’ man.
My wife (now ex) subscribed to TNR (or NYT?) wherein Kael panned Ghostbusters but I’m a sucker for romantic comedy and ironic humor so I loved it. I have along the way been astonished by Ebert’s picks and pans. He is not useful to me.
Retired Radiation Oncologist. Don’t know the details about Ebert’s cancer/treatment but I will say that adenoid cystic ca is extremely rare and I did cure the only two cases I had the opportunity to treat with conventional (photon) radiation therapy following surgical excision.
“Banal” is neocon code for “black.” You are a racist bigot.
Nice troll!
Keep up the good work!
For Gosh Sakes . . . grammar check this thing. Did an editor read this prior to publishing. I haven’t made it throught the first paragraph and the errors are so bad I can hardly follow your point.
The butler is in the room with Kane when he says rosebud before dying.
Ebert is a leftist ideologue who cannot see past his insane hatred of conservative, American heartland values. As other posters have pointed out, if a film spews leftist, anti-American propaganda, he loves it, if it contains any type of pro-America, conservative viewpoints, he loathes it
Ebert cannot & will not separate his politics from his “craft”. He’s a dishonest, hate filled miscreant who speaks only to a tiny minority of elitist liberals who look upon the “arts” as something significant
He’s a propagandist & has a political agenda that seeps through every time
A little perspective, please.
Who and what is Roger Ebert?
He’s a guy who supposedly watches movies and then writes a column and films a tee-vee show to tell me if HE liked them or not and why.
Okay.
So…what?
Thanks for sharing your opinion, even if I didn’t ask for it.
To quote Rett Butler……”Frankly Scarlett…….
Don’t forget, Ebert wrote that “academy award winning” movie of the 70′s, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls!”
The biggest problem with Roger Ebert is that he always puts his ultra-liberal foot forward in his reviews, and it was even worse after he started fighting cancer. I have stopped paying his reviews any attention.
Ebert is like many liberals, who believe that (presumed) expertise in one area translates into expertise in all areas. Thus now we have his leftist mewlings on politics, when he should stick to movies.
But what really makes Ebert a world class horse’s ass is that he can’t keep his politics out of his film reviews. In his review of Iron Man, he somehow manages to include a round of Bush-bashing. If he reviews a movie which includes a nefariois business entity, he invariably compares it to Haliburton. And so on.
Is there anything good that has come out of Illinois? I mean, think about it: Al Capone, Roger Ebert, Oprah Winfrey, and b Hussein Obama.
Couldn’t finish the article. More words than I cared to read on such an unimportant topic.
But Ebert does suck as a movie reviewer. That much I agree with.
For my own personal tastes in movies, there hasn’t been reliable film critic/reviewer since Gene Siskel died. Siskel and Ebert were a good team and I can’t recall disliking a movie they gave two enthusiastic “thumbs up” to. They also turned their audience on to small, independent films that, pre-Internet, I, at least, never would have known about (Enchanted April, Heartland and Strangers in Good Company are three favorites for which I can thank Gene and Roger). However, once Siskel was gone, Ebert allowed his inner lefty to emerge and then take over. His reviews are so tainted by his politics, ideology and angry bitterness against the hand fate has dealt him that they’re rendered essentially worthless.
Back in the day, Ebert did take the occasional stab at serious film criticism and, as I recall, he wasn’t too bad at it. Not too bad at all. No Pauline Kael, I’m sure, but then, I found Kael insufferable most of the time.
What the hell are you people criticizing Ebert for? He is an intellectual who still knows how to critique a film with language understandable to everyone. As for Transformers, it is for the illiterate 3rd-class white masses that enjoy Nascar and think Bush is a ‘Christian genius’ and Obama ‘a Muslim Marxist’. Get a life.
Oh, and leave Ebert alone. He has the wit and intelligence (plus Emmys and other awards) that most movie critics would jealously die for!!!
This is an example of that Ignorance I was speaking of earlier.
Lets test his understanding of culture. He says:
“As for Transformers, it is for the illiterate 3rd-class white masses that enjoy Nascar and think Bush is a ‘Christian genius’ and Obama ‘a Muslim Marxist’.”
I enjoyed transformers, I have a doctoral degree, I do not enjoy Nascar, I think that Bush was a good man with good intentions who did a mediocre job with his foreign policy and acted foolishly/ineptly in regards to his domestic policies, while I consider Obama a Secular Progressive who has acted and formed policies in diametric opposition to the interests of the United States both foreign and domestic.
Therefore, it appears that “Gord Ruddin” is simply wrong. (The irony of leftists such as “Gord Ruddin” being prejudiced against those who actually hold reasoned opinions is not lost on me.)
Film Criticism was a steaming pile of rot from the beginning. Roger Ebert made as living as a film reviewer who sometime wondered into film criticism. He was never very good when he did but only some of the producers and directors of film ever are good at criticism.
Evey year the industry spends ten billion dollars on making films most of which are hopeless. If someone could improve films by 10% Studios would celebrate every time he came to the door.
I don’t know about everyone else, but when I need socio-political expertise, I ALWAYS turn to a…movie critic
As the old saying goes, “those who cannot do, teach; those who cannot teach, critique”
I think Ebert’s popularity stems from the fact that he’s cultivated a reputation as a friendly guy who tells you about movies – and he’s one of the few critics who can go on television and manage not to seem boring or repellent (which is, apparently, a remarkable feet for a movie critic). He’s a thoughtful guy who, in a very shrewd manner, hasn’t said much interesting for the past 20 years. And I have to wonder if his new-found obsession with angry political commentary is, in fact, some kind of weird, guilt-ridden lashing out at his readership.
I agree with a lot of the essay, but, I’m not sure Ebert’s done as much damage to film criticism and, by extent, popular culture as Pauline Kael managed to.