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2002: The Year in Movies

the movie club
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from: Roger Ebert
to: David Edelstein, Sarah Kerr, and A.O. Scott

Watching Ourselves Watch Movies

Updated Friday, Jan. 3, 2003, at 6:41 PM ET

Who are these people?

Dear Friends,

First, Sarah's comments on Adaptation. In my opinion, the film is not about "adaptation" in "the genetic or behavioral sense" but simply a movie about a guy trying to write a screenplay while the characters mess with his mind and ours. It is like many other works where the characters become real for the author. You write, "His attempt to connect writing to evolution is strained." Yes, it is strained. It is supposed to be strained. If he had been able to connect them smoothly, it would have been much less entertaining.

As for the ending, I believe it is a masterstroke. It is not arbitrary or willful but a clear-eyed, cynical demonstration of the tyranny of the formula ending—a demonstration about the countless times we've heard about when studios make directors reshoot the ending after the original ending "tests badly."

Kaufman more than any other screenwriter right now forces us to look at ourselves looking at the movie.

I disagree, by the way, with the theory (not yours) that Kaufman's screenplay is merely the result of his failure to do a straight adaptation of The Orchid Thief. Having tried to listen to the audio book and given up halfway through (orchids, orchids, orchids), I think he quite reasonably found it unadaptable and saved the day with a brilliant, quirky improvisation. I don't think I would have wanted to see a straight adaptation of Orchid Thief anyway.

Lovely and Amazing. Catherine Keener has been criticized for playing the Catherine Keener Role, but isn't that partly because we have all seen ALL of her movies? The average moviegoer may be seeing her for the first or second time. We've also seen all of John C. Reilly's roles. Critics must necessarily approach films in a different way than the average moviegoer because we are more familiar with the connections and conventions. I got a heartfelt note from an articulate grade-schooler once berating me for a review in which I referred to the plot as recycled. It wasn't recycled to him, he said. True enough. Not that it would have altered my review.

(Which leads me to berate the way many newspapers and magazines actually desire critics who reflect rather than lead and inform. A friend of mine was fired as the critic of a major newspaper because, the editor told him, he didn't share the taste of the readers. If they liked Adam Sandler, he should, too. The first movie critic I read with any regularity was Dwight Macdonald, in Esquire, when I was in high school. I read him because he knew more than I did. Today it is perfectly possible to swim in the demographically fine-tuned mass media and never learn anything you didn't already know.)

But back to Catherine Keener repeating herself: Isn't it the usual practice for actors to play a certain kind of role? How many reinvent themselves every time? I like Hugh Grant precisely because he is Hugh Grant, and the best possible Hugh Grant. Keener I almost always enjoy because of the approach she takes to a role; sure, I'd like to see her in something warm and fuzzy, or in a "human comedy," but then again, did I miss her in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood? Would that have been the right career move?

Sarah, I am amazed to learn that Alexander Payne was involved in City of God. Of course the film is nothing at all like any of his—more of a speeded-up GoodFellas.

I am departing at dawn for a place where it will be hard to get online, but not, I hope, impossible and will try to check in again later.

Best,
Roger

the movie club
entries
1234567891011121314151617181920
from: Roger Ebert
to: David Edelstein, Sarah Kerr, and A.O. Scott

Watching Ourselves Watch Movies

Updated Friday, Jan. 3, 2003, at 6:41 PM ET
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Roger Ebert is the Chicago Sun-Times' film critic. David Edelstein is Slate's film critic. You can e-mail him at . Sarah Kerr is Vogue's film critic. A.O. Scott is a film critic at the New York Times.
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Notes From The Fray Editor:

The Movie Club Fray has been busy adding to and subtracting from the critics' lists (additions: Ararat, The Two Towers, Jackass; subtractions: Minority Report, anything that hasn't been in wide release, The Pianist). One item of note: critics should entertain gender-switched hypotheticals at their own peril. Ebert's feminized Igby reminds pnuge of Wish You Were Here; Edelstein's Man-Hours reminds DeaH of American Beauty. jknyc tracks down Ebert's Howard Hawks reference. There is also a smart Spielberg thread—that is, one about narrative and character development and not the omnipresent "bad dad"—here, with seanweitner, simparker and Rachel doing most of the bandying.

Remarks From The Fray:

The reason I felt betrayed by Adaptation's climax was because, just as Mr. Ebert claims, it was thumbing its nose at the members of the audience who didn't understand how "brave" it was. That's a pretty damning criticism from one of the movie's admirers. It's okay to thumb your nose at the start of such a movie--pre-empt criticism, confound expectation, etc. But by the end you should be making a movie for those in the audience who DO understand how brave you are. The best possible ending for this film would have been a true compromise, an actual adaptation by Kaufman; or, on the other hand, as un-McKee an ending as possible, something that Kaufman truly loved. If he was writing the ending for someone who didn't understand the rest of the movie, then it's understandable that I, who liked the rest of the movie, felt so alienated.

Worth it, however, for that gorgeous final time-lapse shot. Most elegant time-lapse photography since Boys Don't Cry.

-- simparker

(To reply, click here.)

"Can you imagine the outcry if Igby had been a teenage girl and her lover the 40-year-old best friend of her father?"

That sounds a lot like David Leland's "Wish You Were Here".

-- pnuge

(To reply, click here.)

Mr. Edelstein says that a man making the same choice as the woman in The Hours would be looked upon as a monstrous coward. It really wasn't too many years ago that Kevin Spacey won an Oscar for playing a man who made just that same choice. His character is seen as liberated for choosing to get high and lust after a rose-covered teen. Mentally, at least, he left his wife and children to live for the first time until he, ironically wasn't alive anymore.

-- DeaH

(To reply, click here.)

The quote about Hawks being enjoyable was in the Sunday NY TIMES Book Review section in a review on Elmore Leonard. [It is; here. The review is by Salon's Charles Taylor and he is citing Robin Wood.—Fray Ed.]

-- jknyc

(To reply, click here.)

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