Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert's approach to reviewing films was intelligent, fair, (hugely) informed, and leavened by a sense of humanity. A good art critic gets his or her readers to look at things in a better, more educated way. The point is not necessarily whether we agree with them or not, but whether we learn from them. I would say I generally agreed with Ebert about 85 percent of the time. Maybe 80 percent. And when I didn't, it was always an unnerving experience. "Two and a half stars, Roger? Come on." It would actually bother me. But, of course, whether final verdicts correspond or not isn't the issue. It's how one, in this case, watches a film. One's ultimate judgment is only as valuable as how one arrived at it. The number of stars is a postscript.

Not merely a good one, Roger Ebert was a great critic, someone from whom I learned quite a lot. He was a clear, engaging writer, and made me a smarter watcher of movies (and probably a better writer). Yet, when a person can make that kind of impact, the influence usually goes beyond the immediate. I'm quite certain Ebert affected how I look at different aspects of life. To analyze film and literature is after all to examine human behavior.

Marking what would have been the 90th birthday of historian Howard Zinn, I quoted from Ebert's review of the 2005 film Crash in my blog post (Aug. 24, 2012) for that day:

Not many films have the possibility of making their audiences better people. I don't expect Crash to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves.

My point was that watching a Howard Zinn lecture can also inspire similar self-improvement.

The quote is a case in point. And it applies to its author as well. Ebert's writing brought one into his moral orbit, encouraging the kind of thinking on display above. His later political essays and journals are of the same quality.

Just before he died, Ebert announced on his blog that he was going to reduce his workload, tend to his websites, but still occasionally review films. As he put it, he was taking a "leave of presence." I don't think that has changed. Thanks, Roger.