Roger Ebert & [The Death of the Film]

 Film critiques and pundits have come out of the woodwork in this latest century; we must attribute this to the average film connoisseur believing they are entitled to an opinion. On the contrary, if one is to look into their own biographies, we'll find that none have created any successful work of filmography themselves...

This is where Roger Ebert stood alone, the greatest film pundit perhaps to ever walk this earth.

Ebert had a way with film, as though film spoke to him immediately upon viewing, and in so doing, he find their flaws as one does psychoanalyzing the human personality. He was meticulous, his eye was a third, his methodology and dedication to film itself was of a gargantuan measure. If film evolved at all, it was not due to the creativity or the auteur's exploration of unorthodox measure and truth, it was in fear of Ebert's critique, one that alone, could make or break a film, become a ladder to a filmmaker's career or the precipice they'd plummet from.

In my perspective, film critiques are separated in 4 distinct genres;

1. The Preference: Filmmakers, as most humans, take into the likeness of certain genres, be it, horror, drama, comedy, action, so much so, they lose perspective in the critique outside of their chosen genre. The door is closed when one adhere fanatically to standards and preference, disallowing their capabilities to see anything outside of their desired view.

2. The Comparable: This is the erroneous form of judgment where one film (namely the film under review) is judged in comparison with another. This is commonplace when judging an original with a sequel or trilogy but a film cannot be judged on its own merits if it is compared to the work of another filmmaker. As Antonin Artaud once said "Masterpieces of the past are only good for the past." The budding filmmaker garners experience as they grow, as they produce, as opposed to an experienced filmmaker who has gained world renown recognition for their work; there comparison is an unrealistic practice and one that needs to be dealt away with if film is to ever receive its due in proper.

3. The Incapable: As success is well-pursued and well-desired, there are some in this world who are not driven and thus receive no accolades to their loiter. It is easier to break down a film, tear it apart from its foundation and axis, then to start at that very axis and foundation and create a film. The failed filmmaker who has lost their momentum can easily become competitive only in the nature of destroying films in reviews. For those who are familiar with Francois Truffaut, film director of the French New Wave, known as "The Gravedigger of French Cinema." Unforgiving in critique, his every notion was to push filmmakers into a direction of forward and remove them from complacency. With the 1959 release of "The 400 Blows," it is clear that Truffaut wasn't an incapable, but the 4th genre of the film critique.....

4. The Capable: This is the filmmaker who has accomplished a solid, legendary film that lives one and rival those of the "modern." His Pulitzer prize for criticism aside, his near four decades of the most notorious pundit in perhaps all history of film remarks him in a hallmark of nothing but, nothing less than brilliant and genius. The 1970 screenplay to Ross Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, co-written by Ebert himself was slowly received by the public, now hailed as a cult classic of the crest. 1999 saw Ebert lose his colleague Gene Siskel; modern film critic great Richard Roeper, admixing a different taste to Ebert's dispassionate reviews, joined him in transforming the method that had begun to take film a step back rather a step forward into transcendence.

 As the loss of Buddy Holly was known to Don McLean as the "Death of the music," the loss of Roger Ebert has come to be known as "The Death of the Film." No one is left to drive filmmakers into their desire, into transcendence; we are now burdened in the realm of art to lose our dreams, borrow those from the past, and recreate them in a petulant complacency

Dontrell Lovet't

from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]