Removed from the grind of television and in recovery from cancer surgery Roger Ebert has become a deep, introspective blogger and writer. Apart from somehow loving Avatar, I think he's become a better film reviewer too. Here's how he begins his review of The Lovely Bones:"The Lovely Bones is a deplorable film with this message: If you're a 14-year-old girl who has been brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer, you have a lot to look forward to. You can get together in heaven with the other teenage victims of the same killer, and gaze down in benevolence upon your family members as they mourn you and realize what a wonderful person you were. Sure, you miss your friends, but your fellow fatalities come dancing to greet you in a meadow of wildflowers, and how cool is that?
The makers of this film seem to have given slight thought to the psychology of teenage girls, less to the possibility that there is no heaven, and none at all to the likelihood that if there is one, it will not resemble a happy gathering of new Facebook friends. In its version of the events, the serial killer can almost be seen as a hero for liberating these girls from the tiresome ordeal of growing up and dispatching them directly to the Elysian Fields. The film's primary effect was to make me squirmy. It's based on the best-seller by Alice Sebold that everybody seemed to be reading a couple of years ago. I hope it's not faithful to the book; if it is, millions of Americans are scary. The murder of a young person is a tragedy, the murderer is a monster, and making the victim a sweet, poetic narrator is creepy. This movie sells the philosophy that even evil things are God's will, and their victims are happier now. Isn't it nice to think so. I think it's best if they don't happen at all. But if they do, why pretend they don't hurt? Those girls are dead."
...
Brilliant, eh? Ebert's post on no longer being able to eat food or drink has rightly become a recent blogging classic. The fact that he mentions one of Cormac McCarthy's lesser known (and one of my favourite) novels Suttree in it is all to the good, although Roger and I are very different people - the scene that sticks in my mind from that book is the, er, incident in the melon patch.
48 comments:
Ebert liked two movies I was pretty crazy about - I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and the Year of Living Dangerously, so I read his reviews more often than anyone else's reviews...but then he started liking movies I thought were pretty crappy. Consistently. So I stopped reading him.
I've had a few discussions with various people about The Lovely Bones, because the story sounds plainly depressing. And these people were eager for me to go see the movie or read the book. Why the hell would I want to read or watch that story?
I'm going to check out Ebert's blog tout de suite.
Stupid sexy Flanders...er,melons.
I like how Ebert reviews movies, even though I don't always agree with him (and what are the chances anybody would?).
For the most part, he tends to judge a movie based upon what the flick itself is trying to accomplish. He doesn't write off lighter, popcorn fare because it's not as deep as The Seventh Seal, and vice versa. I like that quality about him. He seems to get that it's okay for movies to be what they want: artsy or mainstream, dark or light, quirky or straightforward.
Has the movie Creation got a US distributor yet?
And I second what Brian says about Roger Ebert, he talks about each movie based on what it was trying to do.
I sort of met Roger Ebert once, here in my neighbourhood in Toronto. He got off the streetcar and looked around a little bewildered. I asked him if I could help him and he said he thought there was a beach and a boardwalk around here and I pointed him the two blocks south to the water. I asked him if I could walk with him and he politely said no, he was looking for a little quiet time (it was during the film festival).
The next day I saw him at a movie screening and he came over and said hi and we talked about the differences between Toronto and Chicago waterfronts for a few minutes.
I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but I do know someone who went through a similar experience to what the young girl goes through--pretty much just stopping at the point of death and not much before it, and she liked the book a lot. And Sebold wrote it out of her own experience, again of course not the after death element, so I don't think it was intended to be exploitive. I think it was a way to sort out the experience. Perhaps the movie gets off on the wrong foot.
I love Roger Ebert. He has perhaps let some movies off too lightly, though apparently not this one, but it seems so much more likely that after decades of reviewing he would grow steadily more jaded and cynical. Instead, he seems to have kept his youthful enthusiasm.
Thanks for the heads up on this. I follow his reviews, never followed-up on his blog. This gets me there.
Sheiler
Havent read the book. Dont think I'll be seeing the film.
Marco
Yup the siren call of the melons.
OT but did you hear the news that two of your favourites Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are getting married? Two things occur to me about this: 1) if they make babies they should be very talented. 2) Tori Amos is going to be pissed off. She's been waiting out the Gaiman marriage for decades.
Brian
Yes I agree with that. He isnt a snob. Although I feel he should have been a bit more critical to things like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace which was very bad popcorn fare.
John
Thats a very nice story. I like the bit where he "politely" declined. Thats important I think.
My wife and I saw him at Chicago Midway once with his wife. No one talked to him. This was the old Chicago Midway with the low ceilings. In other words the worst airport in the world.
Seana
Yeah its funny that isnt it? You think he would have gotten more bitter and ticked off by Hollywood but apparently he hasnt. Even his current problems havent made him bitter. He's a contrast to, say, Harold Bloom who has become bitter, jaded and borderline crazy.
I havent read the book or seen the film, but I wonder what Peter Jackson was exactly trying to go for.
Vincent
There's lots of good stuff on his blog. I liked the one about longing for food and there's a good ones about religion and politics.
I have to say that I after reading that blog post, I am astounded that he bears it all with such equanimity. It reminds me a bit of how my mother deals with her declining powers, frankly, although I wouldn't say she has been nearly as afflicted as he has.
Sadly, it does not remind me in any way of how I've dealt with or am likely to deal with any calamities that come in my direction.
I'm amazed too at his lack of cynical outlook. I'm super glad that he's got such tremendous output because his blog postings are great.
Midway airport is still an armpit of airports. I don't recall any changes though maybe I've been affected by O'Hare. My parents live in Chicago.
Adrian,
How do you know Tori Amos was waiting for Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman to split up? And, more importantly, do you think he will relocate to Boston when they marry?
Seana
Yeah I'm not sure I could be so calm or poised. I'm an angry young/middle aged man as it is and I'm doing fine.
Sheiler
I have no inside knowledge, I've just been reading between the lines for the last 10 years or so. He's the godfather of her daughter, she's mentioned him in half a dozen songs, she calls him her muse...that kind of thing.
Man, more and more it seems like LOTR was a fluke. Hopefully The Hobbit isn't terrible!
Ebert's always been a good guy. A little kind on some films, but he's usually able to keep them in some kind of context. I just wish he and Siskel had a little more time together. They were both sports buffs, I would've loved to read them blog about lives as Chicago sports fans.
And I miss these days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX2wTfIMtlw&feature=related
Always great guests.
McCarthy is a pretentious prat.
The first ten or fifteen pages of Suttree have about twenty or thirty words I've never heard before. The rest of the book? Not one. Just a guy establishing his credentials as a criticlly important writer. Which is obviously what he cares about.
I suspect the use to which melons are put in the book is the only autobiographical thing about it.
I do like the joke about the guy who died during a public function when the platform gave way, though
Matt
I liked their outttakes too. Did you ever see this classic reel?
Buff
You arent the guy who heckled me in Boston for using big words are you?
No, I think you're right McCarthy can go overboard with the Old Testament language. Its easy to slip into the purple when you're talking like that all the time and you have to watch out. And its all very well being a hermit but you do need to stay abreast of pop culture too - there's a bit in Blood Meridian which is an enormous steal from the Star Trek episode Arena that McC either didnt know about or did and forgot about, but if you've seen the episode and then you read that scene in the book all you can do is groan.
One thing I really like about his Tennessee/Kentucky novels though is his use of Ulster Scots dialect words like skitter, sleekit, etc. that other American writers seldom use.
Funny, I don't remember him using any big words in All the Pretty Horses at all. Quite the opposite. Must have taken a word from the wise about how to write a bestseller.
I'd like to read the early ones for that Ulster Scot stuff, as now I might even understand it.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Roger Ebert – my taste in movies aligned more with Siskel than Ebert – but I wish Ebert well and also hope I show his brand of chutzpah in the face of tragedy.
Siskel and Ebert were so damn cute together! Thanks for the reminders via video clips, Adrian and Matt.
Sometimes it's easier to bear up under tragedy publicly if you've got a decent support system. My late wife had cancer, and everyone used to tell me how she was so optimistic and cheerful, and I had to bite my tongue to not say "that's because you don't have to listen to her at 2 AM letting it all out."
Suttree is the one McC book I started but never finished. I don't even know why; just sort of ran out of steam. My favorite is probably The Crossing.
I'm with those who've noted Ebert's way of judging a movie based on what it's trying to do, rather than what he might want it to do. Whatever differences I've had with some of his reviews, I truly appreciate that approach and can generally tell if I'm interested in a flick from his reviewing style.
I had the pleasure of selling a few books to him when I worked at the now closed Stuart Brent Books on Michigan Ave in Chicago. He was a down-to-earth person, very approachable, very human, and incredibly smart.
As to the question of "Why the hell would I want to read or watch that story?" How about, because it's part of the human experience?
Really, the logic there could basically kill every Greek tragedy, half of all Shakespeare plays, more than a few great novels.... etc.
Not that I want a steady of bleak landscapes and woe, but, I also don't want Wizard of Oz all the time either.
2) Tori Amos is going to be pissed off. She's been waiting out the Gaiman marriage for decades.
Ha! That's funny. And overtaken by another, younger singer-songwriter too...
Neil patterned Delirium after Tori but Amanda looks a bit like Death , and in Sandman everyone who sees Death can't help falling in love with her...
Seana
ATPH is toned down but The Road is back up there again. I think he relaxes in Los Alamos by reading Shakespeare, Milton and the Bible. (As everyone should).
Holden
Its funny on that YouTube the commenters saw their interplay as evidence of hatred. I saw it as evidence of great love and trust.
Gavin
Excellent point. God knows what the hell is going on in the middle of the night. Still if it were me I feel I'd be alternating panic and fury ALL the time.
Suttree is longer than all the other Tennessee novels if I recall. Try Child of God, shorter and more action.
Malachy
He does sound like a decent guy doesnt he?
I dont know if going to heaven and hanging out with other murdered girls is really part of the human experience. But then following a bunch of Hobbits across an imaginary world isnt either is it and no one jumped on Peter Jackson for that.
Marco
Yup I see it. Poor Tori.
Amanda Palmer's coming to Melbourne in a couple of weeks. I wonder if Gaiman will be there too.
Yes, Child is on my to-read list. But it could be that Suttree was just coming on the heels of a McCarthy kick I went through -- I think I read the Western novels one after the other (except for Cities on the Plain, which he hadn't written yet), and Suttree was the straw that broke my reading back. I've always meant to get back to it...
These days I try to space out my reading of one author a bit more.
Now, A, I don't think you really believe I meant THAT. But it is funny...
Siskel and Ebert look and sound like an old married couple in that youtube blooper video. Then they just get downright silly at the end when talking about Protestants. I didn’t see hatred, only very comfortable familiarity. And Siskel is acting a little drunk.
Gavin, I’m so sorry for what you went through. That had to have been really tough.
I can’t even imagine being where Ebert is right now. Well, maybe I can imagine it and it ain’t pretty – I’m on the floor in the fetal position sucking my thumb.
I remember when Siskel was on Letterman back in the late 80s, he busted Ebert's chops for being friendly with film folk. He said something like, "Why should I care what people in the film industry think of me? They don't write me when I'm ill, they won't care less when I die."
Then, at the Academy Aawards the year after he passed away, when Whoopi Goldberg mentioned him, there was huge, as only the Oscars can do it posthumous applause.
オナニー
逆援助
SEX
フェラチオ
ソープ
逆援助
出張ホスト
手コキ
おっぱい
フェラチオ
中出し
セックス
デリヘル
包茎
逆援
性欲
Gavin
Yeah I know what you're talking about. You go on a jag and then it becomes too much. When I was 19 or so I read 22 John Steinbeck books in a row and havent read one since.
Mal
Just keeping it real as the kids say. Or do they? I wouldnt know.
Holden
Yeah I think they enjoy ragging on each other. Thats why Siskel's replacement never really worked. Far too repectful of Ebert.
Matt
I wonder if Mary Hart or Billy Bush will get the same applause with all their grovelling. I suspect not.
not sure who's still reading down here, but I just read this VERY funny piece in The Onion.
Mad props to you, G. I mean, A. Yo.
Yeah, Siskel and Ebert kind of remind me of you and Marco, Adrian, though I won't say which is which.
And Onion Rush reminds me a bit of old Fyodor Karamazov.
Wish I knew what that Chinese or perhaps Japanese person was saying. It might be the key to Everything.
Seana,
It's Japanese, and it's a bunch of sex-related words. (Including "Derriere," which strikes me as funny for some reason).
Gavin, yeah, I kind of figured, since "sex" was the only word that was tranlated. But sometimes they translate well. Over on Martha Silano's blog, a kindly commenter babelfished one for her and it began:
The cool palace spring day's melancholy - sentiment color adult novel - toot toot... and so on.
I've not seen the film yet but I have read 'The Lovely Bones' and my impression was that the treatment of death, with Elysium and all of that, was actually intended as deeply, tragically ironic. We are never really supposed to forget that it is a fiction, and that this too-good-to-be-true fantasy is, of course, too good to be true. For me, it rendered the crime all the more horrible for appealing to our deepest sense of wish-fulfilment (that heaven is real and that the dead are still alive), and pandering to it - and then dropping us like a stone.
So perhaps the film's harsher critics are missing the point? Could they be taking it too much at face value? I found the story's irony searing in the book.
Nick
Thats an excellent point. Deep full fathom five irony. Its possible. I havent read the book or seen the film, however, for reasons too boring to go into here I was required to read the screenplay about two years ago. There was a lot in it that I liked. A whole thing with a snowglobe which just about about broke my heart. In fact I stopped reading about page 33 and skipped to the end because I couldnt take it anymore.
Nick,
I haven't seen the movie, but (IIRC) the New York Times reviewer said that his big issue with the movie was that it blurred all of the harshness/irony in the original novel, and ended up with something much mushier.
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