Roger Ebert loved the movies. "I wanted to hug this
movie," he said when reviewing Ghost World in 2001, and that sense of unbridled
joy after witnessing something special onscreen is the first thing that comes
to mind when I think of him. He began writing about films in 1967, and one of
the most miraculous things about his career is that he never seemed to grow
jaded throughout the many decades he spent watching them. Sure, he often
despaired of the terrible pictures he was forced to endure on a regular basis, but he always searched for
something good in even the worst of them, and he loved to highlight those
moments that reconnected him with the magic of the medium. Lines like
"Minority Report reminds us why we go to movies in the first place,"
"A film like Hoop Dreams is what the movies are for," or "Films
like Fargo are why I go to the movies" were a common refrain.
I've been reading those lines since I was a teenager. When I
first tried to expand and deepen my film knowledge, Roger Ebert was the critic
whose verdict I sought out after seeing a film, and he was the critic whose
writing could compel me to seek out a picture I was unfamiliar with. When he
wrote about a film, he didn't try to impress you with his vocabulary or ideas,
he just wanted to reach you, to make you understand why a certain film made him
feel this way, and hopefully prompt you into seeking out that experience for
yourself. When news broke of his death on Thursday, the mass outpouring of
grief and respect proved beyond all doubt how well he had succeeded in reaching
us. He taught us how to approach movies, he taught us how to write about them,
and ultimately he taught us how to live.
"We are put on this planet only once, and to limit
ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds," Ebert wrote, and
he was someone who was always looking to share new discoveries with his audience. How many young
filmmakers benefitted from his support over the years? He promoted
foreign-language films to a mainstream audience in a way that made than sound
accessible and relatable; he gave tiny independent films a level of exposure
their publicity budget could never buy; he was a great champion of black
cinema; he treated documentaries as an art form equal to narrative features. He
and Gene Siskel almost singlehandedly pushed Hoop Dreams – a three-hour
documentary about two inner-city basketball players – into the national
consciousness in 1994, to the point where the Academy's failure to nominate it
for the Best Documentary Oscar caused a scandal.
Not everyone felt that Ebert's impact was for the best. Some
argued that the "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down" rating system devised by
Siskel & Ebert on their enjoyably antagonistic TV show contributed to a "dumbing-down" of film discourse. This always struck me as an absurd suggestion, one
that ignored the way he used his privileged position to broaden viewers'
horizons and one that ignored the depth and range of both his writing and the
writing that he loved to share. Ebert consistently railed against the dumbing-down
of culture and he firmly believed that cinema was a medium that could unite us,
open our minds and change the way we look at the world. "What I believe is
that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes:
Curious and teachable," he said, and he was a living embodiment of that belief.
If that was Roger Ebert's only contribution to the world
then it would already be a remarkable legacy, but his life changed with a diagnosis
of thyroid cancer in 2002. When further operations resulted in the partial loss
of his jaw, it seemed like the cruellest imaginable joke – to take the ability
to speak away from a man who lived to communicate. In fact, this twist of fate
only made him an even more prolific communicator. The words that
could no longer pass his lips came spilling out from his fingertips at a
phenomenal rate, and his writing became more personal and heartfelt than ever. An old-school journalist
who adapted to new media without skipping a beat, Ebert began using Twitter and his blog to go beyond the walls of the screening room and
share different aspects of his life with us. He told us about his health
problems and his struggle with alcoholism, he shared his spiritual and
political beliefs, he talked about his favourite books and artworks, and he took numerous trips down memory lane. Most frequently, he paid tribute to the
inexhaustible love and support he received from his wife Chaz. When Roger Ebert
died many of us who had never met him felt the loss as if he was a close
personal friend. He poured so much of himself into his writing, we felt we did
know him.
As I watched Roger deal with such an extraordinary
succession of battles against the debilitating effects of cancer, I often
wondered how I would cope under such circumstances. I don't think there's the
slightest possibility that I would display a fraction of the courage and
magnanimity that he showed right up until the very end. How many of us would choose to withdraw from public life in order to hide our difficulties and disfigurement
from the world? Not Roger. He continued to appear on television unconcerned
with the way his appearance had been ravaged by his illness – he was alive,
that was all that mattered. He was still alive, still passionate, still curious
and still stimulated by the exchange of ideas and feelings. It may seem strange
to describe the death of a 70 year-old man who had spent a decade fighting
cancer as a "surprise," but news of Roger Ebert's passing was indeed a
terrible shock. Just two days earlier, as he announced the return of the
disease, he had written of his plans for the website and his excitement at
spending his remaining days writing about his favourite things. It seemed like
he wasn't going anywhere just yet.
It's hard to imagine a world without Roger Ebert. He has
always been a presence in our lives and his passing seems to mark the end of an
era in journalism, but look at the treasure trove he has left behind. We still have his
invaluable archive of reviews and blog posts, as well as his many books and the
television clips that exist online, but above all else there is the piece of him
that will reside inside every aspiring film writer who ever drew inspiration
from his work. In 2001, Ebert wrote an obituary of fellow critic Pauline Kael
and he observed that, "...her spirit and passion were still being echoed
in the words of a generation of film critics she influenced. She changed the
way we talk about movies." I don't think I can come up with a more apt
description of Ebert's own influence on cinematic discourse than that. Of
course Roger Ebert wrote his own best epitaph – are you at all surprised?