Does Roger Ebert Matter?

BEN B. CHUNG: There are few topics that film critics enjoy discussing more than the Role of the Film Critic. The argument is typically framed as a battle between the audience and the critic, as if their interests somehow diverge as they enter the movie theatre. The debate often starts over a single movie; a filmgoer will watch a movie that they loathe, notice a critical consensus surrounding it and redirect their animosity towards the “out-of-touch” critics. The critics will respond in kind with an admonition of the masses’ susceptibility to Big Hollywood, making blunt attempts to simultaneously assert and conceal their claims to intellectual superiority.

Watching this schoolyard scuffle with a smirk plastered across his goateed face, taking a perpetually unsatisfying drag from his hand-rolled cigarette, is the intellectual film critic. To those removed from the academic world, this person doesn’t exist, but any student at all familiar with the inside of a university film studies department knows his kind very well. Subsisting on a rigid diet of Fassbinder and Brakhage, the only filmic pleasure he knows is found deep within his Criterion collection.

Though I’ve barely dipped my toe in the vast ocean of VES, I’m already finding a strong current of sub-art-house snobbery targeted towards anything with even the faintest odor of mainstream allure. One of the easier marks is the film critics of the four stars variety. I was recently involved in a discussion in a VES class when the name of Roger Ebert was dropped. Like a slab of chum in a pool of makos, the country’s leading film reviewer was quickly disparaged and disposed of. Though I can’t say I quite distinguished any actual case made against him, I think I can surmise the case: by condensing his analysis of a film to the flick of an appendage, he severely reduces general appreciation of an art.

So yeah, Ebert’s storied thumb is usually all that people pay attention to, despite the fact that his weekly reviews are consistently thoughtful and crisply written, if a little heavy on plot (before y’all start sneering, take some time to actually read one of his recent pieces; his United States of Leland review is a good start). And yes, film criticism of the Cahiers du Cinema variety can be as much an art form as filmmaking itself, and to rise to such prominence by diminishing it seems terribly unjust. But to dismiss the significance of Ebert with a derisive snort is to lose sight of the real battle. Film should essentially be created for the mutual appreciation of artist and audience alike, not solely for the benefit of its creator. When the dialogue on film is held behind closed doors in a college classroom or at an exclusive, meaninglessly referential symposium, the general population has no choice but to trot off in droves to Hollywood drivel.

Roger Ebert has taken perhaps a less esteemed path, but has no doubt played an elemental role in the success of some of the greater films of the past few years; his ardent advocacy of City of God, Lost in Translation and Y Tu Mamá También helped elevate what might have been six-figure art-house bombs to veritable box office successes. He often recommends ultra-mainstream spectacles as well, but that is a necessary burden that accompanies the position of head critic at a heavily circulated newspaper. The important point is not that he gave Ella Enchanted a better star rating than, say, Memento, but that he has built notable bridges between experimental filmmakers and mainstream audiences in a way no other working critic can lay claim to.

So what’s your take on VES elitism, Ebert and the power of film criticism? Should intellectual types join in the fray to back up their less erudite peers? Or should they remain in their bubble, distanced from any potential mainstream impact?

BEN SOSKIN: I’ve read so much Ebert that I could predict his star ratings in my sleep. Any film with one of the following elements—good characters, an intriguing plot, or a noble message—gets at least two and a half stars, regardless of its other deficiencies; any film with two of the elements gets at least three and a half stars, even if it’s short on the third element (usually plot). Hence, poor Roger spends his days showering praise on dragging, decently acted message movies like Monster and The Insider (and, dare I say, Lost in Translation and Y Tu Mamá También), turning their lack of momentum into a virtue with a line like “this movie is reminiscent of a great novel”–—faint praise, given that I’ve read few “great” novels that didn’t drag terribly. Yes, Ebert also calls attention to some underappreciated gems, but consider this: he likes about as many movies as he dislikes—he has to, otherwise his TV show would quickly grow tedious. And in an industry whose crap-to-quality ratio is perhaps ten-to-one, that means that Ebert will give thumbs up to four or five banalities for every gem, underappreciated or not.

That all being said, Ebert has a wonderful mind and writes with more maturity and unforced eloquence than most of the Film Comment feeders; his perspectives and passions have certainly informed mine a great deal over the last ten years. I’d also say that I can’t fault him for pushing his “Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down” catchphrases any more than I can fault politicians for pushing their campaign slogans; the fact that something is gimmicky and commercial need neither demean its medium nor degrade its own usefulness. With all the time that you say VESers are spending bitching about how Gene and Roger have developed a catchy way to say “love it/hate it,” they’re probably missing something good at the Brattle.

And what of those VESers? I don’t have much quarrel with them; one of the best courses I’ve taken at Harvard was Bruce Jenkins’ American independent film survey. The philosophies and personal viewpoints that I took from that course and from other VES offerings were varied and useful; even when I disagreed with them, my disagreements helped me to refine my own perspective as an audience member and as a critic. And during my limited time among VES students, I never really perceived a catastrophic strain of elitism in them. But if they’re as high-falutin’ as you say they are, let’s lock them in an auditorium and force them to watch Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests over and over for a week. After an ordeal like that, they’ll stagger out and happily kiss The Rock’s feet.

Now on the other hand, there’s such a thing as getting drunk on “fun” in art–of course, I’m damning Pauline Kael. I wrote film reviews for my hometown paper when I was in high school, and when I got the job the newspaper gave me a copy of Kael’s 5001 Nights at the Movies; after spending several exasperating hours at that book, I put it down never wanting to see the word “fun” used in a review ever again. Wielding that one word, she justifies the least entertaining schlock and pisses on compelling and unpretentious masterworks. That’s certainly her right, but her attitude has borne a body of work whose opinions I hardly ever agree with—and if I do, it’s usually for different reasons.

Dave Kehr, the New York Times’ second-stringer, gave an interview in 2001 to the web magazine Senses of Cinema, and his wonderful assessment of Kael in that interview merits quoting at length: “Oddly, her influence has become all the more present after she retired, as her acolytes have spread all over. It’s the same voice: mildly amused, a little condescending, seeing ‘trashy’ and ‘sexy’ as the highest praise you can give…I’ve never seen her dig any ideas out of a movie or dig into its structure beyond ‘I like this guy and I don’t like this guy.’” Quite so; I’ve borrowed a few rhetorical tricks from her, but we don’t think on the same wavelength at all.

Obviously, there’s a middle ground in this debate that we can all hew to—a commitment to a perspective from which we can delight in artworks both popular and obscure. The world would be poorer without Bruce Conner and James Benning and Hollis Frampton, but it would also be poorer without Mel Brooks and Ridley Scott and Monty Python. Those who snub one camp for the other are depriving themselves of a lot of worthy and compelling work.