I love the movies, or as I like to call them, the pictures. We should bring that term for the movie theater back—the pictures. Since I was a kid I’ve liked going to the movies: the being awake in the dark, the cold, sweet Coca-Cola and buttery popcorn, the air-conditioning, and of course above all, the storytelling. When I got to college, I took a couple of film classes that allowed me to become a better film-viewer. I learned about apertures, shot lengths, and camera angles. The professor turned our attention to pacing, make-up, and genuine drama. Watching film grew into an experience as literary as reading books, and as with books, I began wanting to watch only the best films. Before paying to see a movie, I’d first read a few reviews, but not by just any critic. I searched out the reviewers who had seen all the great movies, who wrote about film from an artist’s perspective, who viewed film as a sacred art of raw power—and film-viewing as something akin to church. There are many film critics that fit this description, but none better than Roger Ebert.
Calling Ebert a film critic is troublesome. The term “critic” has too much baggage, typically referring to someone who steps outside of a work of art to trash it or speak meaning on the artist’s behalf. A better word for Ebert is an essayist, and his essays are always cerebral, moral, and enlightening. Now, of course, Ebert has written vicious screeds on bad movies, but his negative reviews are well thought-out, and always humorous. Ebert has educated me on the many facets of film, filmmaking, and storytelling, and the need human beings have for this art. One of my favorite living theologians, Michael Frost, says the movie theater is where many people go in the 21st Century to experience God. For many, the movie house has replaced the church. In his own way, Ebert affirms this idea: “Francois Truffaut said that for a director it was an inspiring sight to walk to the front of a movie theater, turn around, and look back at the faces of the audience, turned up to the light from the screen. If the film is any good, those faces reflect an out-of-body experience: The audience for a brief time is somewhere else, sometime else, concerned with lives that are not its own. Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people” (The Great Movies, xv). Ebert underscores great film’s ability to—as Flannery O’Connor once said—intrude upon the timeless. This is an ideal that Ebert carries with him into every essay, and his prose leads me into the practice of good stewardship of storytelling, film, and art in general.
Like the book, film is also going through considerable changes. For many, seeing a good story in 2-D in a cinema is no longer enough. 3-D movies are becoming ever more popular, and most often, without any good reason. 2-D is old hat, not as entertaining as when an image leaps out at us. Those of us that prefer the 2-D experience can still be affected, since the lens for the 3-D movie—difficult to remove—often remains on the projector for a 2-D film, draining the color and light from the picture. About this, Ebert responds, “I despair. This is a case of Hollywood selling its birthright for a message of pottage. If as much attention were paid to exhibition as to marketing, that would be an investment in the future. People would fall back in love with the movies. Short-sighted, technically-illiterate penny-pinchers are wounding a great art form.” Along with the proliferation of 3-D, theaters are cropping up with simulation seats that bump and jar, rise and turn like a roller coaster. The movies appear to be heading towards the experience of inauthentic stimulation instead of sticking to the film alone, allowing the movie to close in around us and hold us in the delicate electricity of fine storytelling. Reading Ebert’s essays make me aware of the restorative and cathartic nature of film. These days, watching a good movie, like reading a book, purges my mind of the clutter that the average day accumulates, especially in this information age.
And what about movie stores? The chain movie store has vanished more quickly than the big box bookstore. Music stores have been dealt a similar blow. As of this year, the two movie stores I’ve been in have been independently owned, and if I had to guess, struggling. Establishments that deal in storytelling and art are essential to the health of a community. I won’t lie, I like Netflix, but when a film is recommended by someone who has dedicated their life to the viewing and recommendation of film, I pay closer attention. I hold out hope for my community, however. Lemuria is still here, struggling less than three or four years ago, and with the establishment of Morning Bell here in Jackson, the new record store, venue, and studio, the availability of art from local vendors is gaining traction. Books like Ebert’s The Great Movies nurture an appreciation for art and the power of storytelling, and such books at this point in history, are essential. If enough people purchased his essays and chose to watch great films, perhaps his reviews and those of his fellow critics would not be the main source of my discovery. I could also depend on the discussion of my community. Lemuria offers this kind of community through its events and Atlantis book club. I hope it continues to thrive on the power of storytelling. -Ellis
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