Among other things, the collection includes discussions of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (released ‘after the Summer of Love but before Woodstock’), and Hiyao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (written after Ebert’s third viewing). Also included are reviews of Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, and Spielberg’s deceptively simple science-fiction narrative, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence – a film that Kubrick gave to Spielberg when he felt he could not achieve the special-effects required.
“Roger Ebert was more than just an opposable thumb.”
Kubrick makes a couple more appearances through appraisals of The Killing, which the director considered ‘to be his first mature feature’, and Barry Lyndon, on which Ebert writes: ‘It is in every frame a Kubrick film: technically awesome, emotionally distant, remorseless in its doubt of human goodness’. The recently restored print of Barry Lyndon has prompted something of a critical revaluation, but it’s clear to see that Ebert has been a longstanding supporter, praising it as ‘one of the master’s best’, ‘aggressive in its cool detachment’.
At other times, Ebert’s personal experiences reflect his long career as a film critic connected to the industry, yet observing from a distance. When reviewing Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation he mentions having encountered Bill Murray in social situations during his time at Chicago’s Second City. He goes on to say that Murray’s appearance offers ‘surely one of the most exquisitely controlled performances in recent movies’. (The presence of Lost in Translation highlights the scarcity of women directors included in Ebert’s book, but also in Hollywood more generally.)
“Not only are these moments in Great Movies IV enjoyable and revealing, but demonstrate a film critic who is often teetering on the brink of narrative. Ebert is a writer who has plenty of his own stories to tell.”
The collection includes a number of meditations on European cinema, including Robert Bresson, Michael Haneke, and Werner Herzog (‘Herzog fascinates me’). Of Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, Ebert writes that ‘his films live not in the moment but in their complete length, and for the last hour I was more spellbound that during a thriller. Bresson does nothing to make me “like” the priest, but my empathy was urgently involved’. He calls Michael Haneke ‘a masterful Austrian’, and ‘a meticulous filmmaker’ when reviewing his first major international success, Caché: ‘How is it possible to watch a thriller intently two times and completely miss a smoking gun that’s in full view? Yet I did.’
Ebert also writes about the treatment and representation of the Holocaust in modern and contemporary cinema, from the ‘straightforward realism’ of Tim Blake Nelson’s The Grey Zone (which, he adds, defies conventions of the genre by resisting the expectation of an upbeat ending). He describes Claude Lanzmann’s landmark documentary Shoah as ‘one of the noblest films ever made’, and ‘an act of witness’. Ebert focusses on a number of scenes in Lanzmann’s film, and praises the filmmaker as a ‘patient interrogator’ who adopts ‘a poetic, mosaic approach’. Ebert captures what is profound and overwhelming about the film as a document of oral history: ‘They talk and talk. Shoah is a torrent of words, and yet the overwhelming impression, when it is over, is one of silence.’
One of the delights of the collection is the opportunity to see Ebert go back to films and to watch them in the broader context of a filmmaker’s career. He points out that the dark detective thriller Seven was made by David Fincher when he was just 29-years-old, an amazing feat. He praises Morgan Freeman’s depiction of the ageing detective as one of his ‘best performances’, citing ‘[t]he enigma of Somerset’s character […] at the heart of the film’. Ebert sees in the visual imagination of the young Fincher an affinity with the earliest works of cinema: ‘I remember a shot in Murnau’s Faust (1926) in which Satan wore a black cloak that enveloped a tiny village below. This is the sensation Fincher creates here.’
“Roger Ebert is not afraid to voice an opinion about a film, nor is he afraid to admit when a film escapes or evades his grasp.”
The fourth volume of Great Movies is a book that not only celebrates the rich cultural history of moviemaking, but commemorates the memory of Ebert himself, who passed away back in 2013. It includes a moving introduction by his spouse, Chaz Ebert, and a forward by Matt Zoller Seitz, who oversees the official Roger Ebert website. Seitz notes that the life and work of ‘Roger Ebert casts a long shadow’, which is undoubtedly true. But, as this final instalment of the Great Movies series attests, Ebert’s enthusiasm for the films that he loved also casts a brilliant light.
The Great Movies IV is available from Chicago University Press.
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