My memories of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on television are of two serious-faced men. Not grim, but rarely smiling. That was before I studied sociolinguistics and learned that people in areas such as sunny Southern California smiled more than in other regions.
Smiling too much might seem insincere and mark you as a simpleton. But sometimes we are where we’re from. I’m a Southern California girl and Roger Ebert is Illinois-proud.
In April, I was finally able to meet Ebert, having been invited to the Ebertfest as a panelist. This wasn’t my first time in Chicago or the Urbana area. I have visited a long time ago, but my memories of that summer are dim.
The Weather Channel predicted thunderstorms on our departure from Los Angeles (LAX) and our arrival in Chicago (O’Hare), but grey skies only greeted us in the Windy City and then at the smaller airport in Urbana. Expecting drowning rain and sloshy brown mud, the subdued beauty of the cities, Urbana and Champaign were a welcome relief.
Film festivals in Los Angeles can be stressful since they usually don’t occur anywhere near where you live and might have screenings in several different locations within the city—usually these are not in walking distance. There’s the so-L.A. issue of parking—finding it and paying for it. All of this is stressful and annoying. Road rage can be real and distance as related to traveling time can be unpredictable.
Walking the streets of Champaign-Urbana or Urbana-Champaign, I was struck by the flatness. The green expanses marked by the trees seem to stretch off mysteriously forever. No aggressive panhandlers as one would find in downtown Los Angeles where I once worked. No crowded streets of Hollywood. There’s a calmness that allows one to appreciate the buildings and the greenery.
As a guest of the festival, I had a minder who had been attending the festival for every one of its 14 years. The festival and the man behind the festival, Ebert, inspire that kind of devotion.
Below are abbreviated reviews of some of the Ebertfest movies.
Joe Versus the Volcano
The John Patrick Shanley’s 1990 “Joe Versus the Volcano” came after “Moonstruck” and struck out at the box office, yet has reportedly developed a cult following and festival attendees were invited to join the cult. If one should never judge a book by its cover, then one should never judge a movie by its title.
Shanley in his directorial debut recognized the romantic chemistry between two future stars. “Joe Versus the Volcano” was the first of three movies that paired Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan together. Shanley is known as the “Bard of Bronx,” but “Joe Versus the Volcano” is far removed from the hard lives of the blue collar in the Bronx.
Hanks plays Joe Banks, a man stuck in white-collar hell in Staten Island.
When Dr. Ellison (Robert Stack) informs Joe he has a terminal case of brain cloud, he quits his job and asks his co-worker DeDe (Meg Ryan) out on a date. But DeDe isn’t ready for a soon-to-be-dead boyfriend, leaving Joe alone. A wealthy industrialist, Samuel Graynamore (Lloyd Bridges0 learns of Joe’s plight and asks him to help him gain the goodwill of a small tribe in the Pacific so that he can mind a rare mineral. All Joe has to do is throw himself into a volcano to appease the angry volcano gods. Until then, Joe has time for some high living.
Shanley only directed one other movie and it wasn’t a comedy, making this overlooked gem glow with nostalgic regret of a promise unfulfilled. What was the silver screen’s loss was the gain for theater-goers. Shanley has in the past enjoyed directing his own works. If you’re lucky, you’ll have seen one.
Taking Shelter
How does one interpret writer/director Jeff Nichols’ “Taking Shelter”? A lot depends upon what you believe, particularly since it’s not readily apparent what Nichols in his story believes.
Set in a small town in Ohio, the movie focuses on a blue-collar family man, Curtis LaForche. Portrayed by Michael Shannon, Curtis is a man of few words, emotionally constipated, but still a good man. Curtis is having dreams, but he hesitates to call them nightmares. Nichols toys with our cinematic expectations. Are we in a Hitchcockian thriller where birds can attack and hold a town hostage? Are we in a zombie movie where neighbors become brain-munching frenemies? Are we in a demon-possession movie where one’s spouse becomes homicidal? Or is Curtis seeing into the uncertain future? Or is he solely going mad?
Nichols’ doesn’t give us easy answers and shows us normal, everyday scenes that are just slightly off-kilter. Sometimes it’s just the soundtrack (original music by David Wingo) sometimes it is the slightly cold bluish cast (cinematography by Adam Stone) or the overexposed, harshly lit indoor scenes.
True to his build up, Nichols doesn’t give us a neat package or an ending that answers all the questions raised, but he does show one thing a family can do when the world seems on the brink of personal or natural disaster—draw together and weather the storm with the ones you love.
Higher Ground
Being religious is the norm for some countries, but in America today, it isn’t easy being religious—even if one is Protestant. Just the topic of religious faith might turn people away from the 2011 movie,“Higher Ground.” Based on Carolyn S. Brigg’s book, “This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost,” “Higher Ground” takes our protagonist from a hopeful child, to a pregnant teen marrying her musician boyfriend to a woman who becomes immersed in a very radical Christian community.
Briggs and Tim Metcalfe wrote the screenplay that neither indicts nor romanticizes Briggs’ journey into a kind of hyper-faithfulness to God.
The movie makes it clear that this story was very much a product of the 1970s, a hippie church that ignored feminism and found comfort in benevolent paternalism. From the beginning we see that the adult Corinne (Vera Farmiga who also directs) is plagued by the practical.
Her husband, Ethan Miller (Joshua Leonard), doesn’t make it to college having set his heart on being a rock star, but that relegates him to low-paying jobs. The small community has separate meetings for the husbands where they learn to satisfy their women and where the wives learn to be obedient. There is a comfort in following and a serenity in not questioning, but that kind of existence is not for all people, as Corinne finds out.
In the movie, “Higher Ground,” Briggs gives a balanced view of the good, the bad and the not so bad aspects of life in a small close-knit church group. Some of these may remind one of the lost social ties of farming families of the past. First time director Vera Farmiga brings intelligent and humorous life to this harmless hippie world and the main character who grows to want more.
Big Fan
Like “Higher Ground,” “Big Fan” is about single-minded devotion, but instead of to God, the protagonist Paul (Patton Oswalt) is “the world’s biggest New York Giants fan.”
Paul lives with his mother (Marcia Jean Kurtz) in Staten Island and by day works a mind-numbingly dull job as a parking garage attendant. During his time waiting in his booth, he composes diatribes to read at night when he makes his regular call as Paul from Staten Island to Sports Dogg radio talk show, often challenging or berating Philadelphia Phil, a Philadelphia Eagles fan.
What seems like a stroke of luck becomes a life-changing challenge to this big fan. He spots the Giants’ star player, Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm). We recognize him from a poster on Paul’s bedroom wall. Paul and his best friend Sal follow him first to a seedy part of town and then to a Manhattan strip club. At the club, instead of leering at girls, the boys Paul and Sal can’t stop staring at Bishop until they finally get the gumption to introduce themselves. After a small misunderstanding, Bishop beats Paul unconscious.
What happens next forces Paul to make choices and even sacrifices to prove just how big a Giants fan he is. Can you understand obsession at this level? Don’t we all know someone who has checked out of living life by latching on to someone, some thing that is larger than life, and somehow represents something better to them and by association makes them better?
A Separation
With “A Separation,” writer/director Asghar Farhadi has given us a universal tale of children, parents and hard choices where, much like life, there are no happy endings. Family members have different needs and fulfilling them means sacrifices, but do we sacrifice the needs of the young for the old?
The original title of this 2011 drama is “A Separation of Nader from Simin.” At the 84th Academy Award, this film won “Best Foreign Language Film.” It had already won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.
The story itself is simple. Nader (Payman Moadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) are an upper midde-class couple in Tehran with one daughter, the 11-year-old Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). Simin wants her daughter to have more opportunities and wishes to leave the country. Nader needs to care for his father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) who suffers from Alzheimer’s and so Nader wants to stay in Iran. Simin has filed for divorce, but the court family judge doesn’t find Simin’s reasons for divorce justifiable under Iranian law.
Simin moves back with her parents and on her recommendation, Nader hires a poor, religious woman Razieh, to care for his father while he is at work. One day Nader and Termeh return home but Razieh isn’t there. Nader’s father has fallen off the bed but cannot move because one of his arms is tied to the bed. An angry Nader confronts Razieh when she returns and in the confusion of him trying to revive and care for his father and get Razieh out, he shoves her and she falls. Razieh has a miscarriage because of her fall and Nader has thus murdered her child.
As we follow the court’s investigation and Simin and Nader’s separate attempts to resolve this dilemma, honesty and ethics are twisted to serve justice but Termeh must decide in the end what she can live with and what parent she will follow.
VoD panel
In Los Angeles, one generally expects that all movies will open here and usually before other areas of the country. Yet this last weekend, I was eagerly looking forward to seeing the movie, “Bernie,” a dark comedy about murder and manners that had received good reviews from both Roger Ebert and the New Yorker. Yet that movie was originally only open in one theater in all of Los Angeles.
For people with broader interests, who want to see a culture in all its various aspects or who are tired of predictable big blockbuster fare, VoD is the answer to our wishes. We no longer have to re-schedule our lives and drive out of our city to another to see movies that pique our interests. We don’t even need a TV either.
Social Networking and the shared audience experience
While there was much grumbling about the appalling lack of manners brought on by social media and smart phones, Los Angeles live theaters have attempted to take a practical approach. The Pantages Theater has evenings where in a special section, people are allowed, no encouraged to tweet. Recently, during Black History month, Center Theatre Group held special tweet sessions between two related plays: “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Clybourne Park.”
We can complain about social media, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ or we can consider positive ways to use them to build a community. I’d imagine there are only a couple dozen people in each brick-and-mortar community serious enough to make the 4-hour commitment to watch a live opera broadcast. Yet linking those small groups can expand the community and encourage beautiful conversations across city, state and national borders.
What We Deserve: The performance of life
There’s an old saying that at a certain age you get the face you deserve. Post-surgery, Ebert’s eyes have become his main means of expression when you meet him in person, more luminous than I recall them during his TV heyday. His boneless jaw hangs gapping as if “gobsmacked” by some pleasant surprise. His facial expression is one of joy, though I know surgery have left him with pain in his right shoulder and back.
If you believe in God, as I do, you feel that we always get what we deserve, but not necessarily so on this earth. I don’t believe that people deserve illness or pain, or that everything necessarily serves a purpose because I also believe in free will.
Ebert has, for 14 years out of his 45 as a film critic, been sharing his joy of movies at Ebertfest where he once personally took on every introduction and post-screening discussion. More recently, he has been opening our eyes to the beauty of architecture and community through his blog. Now having visited Champaign and Urbana, I am sure his love of architecture and community building grows from his hometown. There’s something cozy and comforting about the city despite what feels like mesmerizing flatness to this SoCal girl.
At the festival, I was able to meet my fellow Demanders, including first-hand proof that Odie Henderson and Steven Boone are not the same person. Henderson cuts a dapper figure and maybe some day we’ll be able to cut a rug and do some swing dancing. Boone surrounds himself with an air of quiet, a stillness that sharply contrasts Henderson’s flair for fashion (and that’s not just the hat) and bold words. Donald Liebenson made me wish for the comforts and constraints of family and reminded me how quickly this Internet age opened up and engulfed my world. Am I really a cyborg?
Meeting Jim Emerson made me appreciate plaid while the FFC Omer Mozaffar will always be associated with sweater vests and argyle. Some day maybe I’ll find the quiet, the center of calm that Emerson, Mozaffar and Boone seem to inhabit, but I think this may be contrary to my nature as I return to turmoil in Los Angeles.
Although I didn’t actually sing karaoke, I’m glad that the exuberant FFC Olivia Collette convinced me to join the unofficial Thursday night karaoke party at a bar. The last bar I was in served sushi and tempura, but no karaoke on the side. Henderson did a blazing rendition of Prince “Let’s Go Crazy” while Collette made things more international with one verse of German for “99 Balloons.” I don’t know many people who can do “Bohemian Rhapsody” or would even dare try, but Russell did.
These were all people whose words were filled with wonder and warmth, humor and dignity. Friends of friends who are surely to become friends.
As it was National Dance week, I tried to dance at the drop of a hat and even when I didn’t see Henderson’s hat dropping. I heard a rumor that there are three Argentine tango communities in the area. Should I venture to the festival again, maybe I’ll be able to mingle with some other dancers and the friendship chain will grow. Luckily for my dance anywhere daring, I was able to throw off an informal tango the first day for Ebert.
Back at home, things are not so tidy or cozy, but the world has become a warmer place. I’m not sure that one truly gets the face one deserves at a certain age, but I believe that we get the communities that we deserve.
Where once I saw a serious-faced man in Ebert, I now see a joyful friend who has opened up another world, provided new links of friendship across the globe and promoted art that moves us as opposed to ones that move our money into movie moguls’ bank accounts. Do I deserve this kind of friendship? The kind of global community Roger Ebert has built came from giving so perhaps only after giving and giving more will I be able to answer this.
Age of the Geek 