The Great Movies by Roger Ebert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls. They allow us to enter other minds - not simply in the sense of identifying with characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it."

Roger Ebert was to me the best film critic ever. No one else could write about movies with such passion, wisdom, and literary talent. Yes, there was Pauline Kael, and I read two big collections of her reviews. Yet for me, she was too opinionated in a mean way, and I sensed too much of a cold brain and not enough heart in her reviews.

I have already reviewed The Great Movies III and The Great Movies II, so now it's time for the original. The Great Movies was published in 2002 and, like its two sequels, it contains 100 reviews of 20th century movies that Mr. Ebert found the most important. In attempting the review, I will use the same approach as I did for the sequels. Instead of reviewing all reviews, which I am totally not qualified for, I will quote a few beautiful sentences - some stunning metaphors - from the reviews of five movies, which I personally consider the greatest in this set, and add some thoughts of mine.

Coppola's Apocalypse Now: Quite likely the best movie I have seen in my life. It shook me to the core. I was sick all night and most of the next day after seeing the film 41 years ago. Mr. Ebert writes a similar thing:

"Apocalypse Now is one of the central events of my life as a filmgoer."

He continues:

"[it] is more clearly than ever one of the key films of the century."

He offers an attempt at an explanation:

"The whole movie is a journey toward Willard's understanding of how Kurtz, one of the army's best soldiers, penetrated the reality of war to such a depth that he could not look any longer without madness and despair."

Without any doubt, the film has the best intro sequence of all movies in history, with Martin Sheen, and The Doors playing The End. I disagree, though, with Mr. Ebert about Marlon Brando. To me, everybody loved Marlon Brando's part because he was Marlon Brando. It is Martin Sheen and his out-of-this-world phenomenal performance that makes Apocalypse not just a masterpiece but likely the best movie ever made.

Antonioni's Blowup: Mr. Ebert writes:

"Freed from hype and fashion, it emerges as a great film, if not the one we thought we were seeing at the time."

I felt the same when I watched the movie twice about 20 years ago, after I had seen it the first time in 1966, when I was a teenager, and when I was fascinated with sex, The Yardbirds' music, sex, London in the Sixties, the mystery of the possible murder, and did I mention sex? Now I see that what Mr. Ebert writes is accurate:

"Whether there was a murder isn't the point. The film is about a character mired in ennui and distaste, who is roused by his photographs into something approaching passion."

Kieslowski's The Decalogue, which is difficult to fit here as it is a series of 10 one-hour films, each loosely based on a Commandment: Isn't Mr. Ebert's metaphor stunning:

"[...] you see that the Commandments work not like science, but like art; they are the instructions for how to paint a worthy portrait with our lives."

And even more importantly:

"These are not characters involved in the simpleminded struggles of Hollywood plots. They are adults, for the most part outside organized religion, faced with situations in their own lives that require them to make moral choices."

Resnais's Last Year in Marienbad: Hypnotic, hermetic, hallucinatory.

"[...] the three characters would move forever through their dance of desire and denial [...]

To me, watching this movie is closest to listening to classical music and admiring the timeless beauty of structure. Mr. Ebert writes:

"Yes, it involves a story that remains a mystery, even to the characters themselves. But one would not want to know the answer to this mystery. Storybooks with happy endings are for children. Adults know that stories keep on unfolding, repeating, turning back on themselves, on and on until that end which no story can evade."

Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence: As Mr. Ebert writes, the film shows "an uncertain balance between hope and fear." He also writes:

"There is no safe resolution at the end of any of Cassavetes's films. You have the feeling that the tumult of life goes on uninterrupted, that each film is a curtain raised on a play already in progress. The characters seek to give love, receive it, express it, comprehend it."

A great, great movie, the only one out of the five that I mention here, along Apocalypse, that would certainly be among the top five movies I have ever seen. I am not sure how much of my love for this movie is due to the director and how much to the screenplay that shows that there is no border between being a normally functioning person and a mentally sick one. And how much to Ms. Rowlands's phenomenal performance.

The review is way, way too long so I will just list the three "honorable mentions." Taxi Driver, The "Up" Documentaries, and Belle de Jour. When reading this great set of reviews enjoy all the wondrous metaphors!

Four-and-a-quarter stars.

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