The face of frailty: or, Roger Ebert is my hero

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I’ve been processing McLaren’s book a little more, hoping that my next post about it will be a little more, well, sensible. In the meantime, there is a story I wanted to discuss. 

Roger Ebert is my hero.

He has been for a while now, because I love movies, and I’ve found that he is looking for the same thing in movies that I am, but he finds them so much better. His insights always surprise me, and he is my best guide through potential Netflix picks.

Take, for example, his comments on the strange ending of one of my all-time favorites, Magnolia:

All of these threads converge, in one way or another, upon an event there is no way for the audience to anticipate. This event is not “cheating,” as some critics have argued, because the prologue fully prepares the way for it, as do some subtle references to Exodus. It works like the hand of God, reminding us of the absurdity of daring to plan. And yet plan we must, because we are human, and because sometimes our plans work out.“Magnolia” is the kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave logic at the door. Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy. At three hours it is even operatic in length, as its themes unfold, its characters strive against the dying of the light, and the great wheel of chance rolls on toward them.

Or, consider his take on another one of my favorites, 2001: A Space Odyssey, specifically on why there was so much confusion after its 1968 star-studded premiere:

What he had actually done was make a philosophical statement about man’s place in the universe, using images as those before him had used words, music or prayer. And he had made it in a way that invited us to contemplate it — not to experience it vicariously as entertainment, as we might in a good conventional science-fiction film, but to stand outside it as a philosopher might, and think about it.

Now, that’s pretty good stuff.

So this guy writes good movie reviews. Big deal, right? Well Ebert’s been in the news lately because he had surgery last June to remove a cancerous growth in his salivary gland and right jaw. Two weeks later, a blood vessel erupted near the operation site, and he had an emergency surgery. Since then, they’ve tried to fix his jaw, where some of it was removed in the initial surgery, and the two surgeries have been unsuccessful.

So when his annual Ebert Overlooked Film Festival arrived this year, people expected him to stay home on account of his disfigured face. His friends told him not to go because of the paparazzi and what the unfriendly gossip columnists would say, but Ebert refused to do so, saying, “We spend too much time hiding illness.”

So he went. He was applauded by those in attendance. And since he could not speak, his wife, Chaz, read his comments on about the occasion, which he had prepared by using a line from his own screenplay for “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and which had been quoted famously in Austin Powers: “It’s my happening and it freaks me out!”

Ebert’s choice to go to this event is unbelievable. It may not sound like it at first, but then you ask yourself if you would go to such a public event as such a public figure with you’re mouth drooping and slobbering. I think you’ll agree with me that you (and I) would likely decline the invitation.

Why do we spend so much time hiding illness, as Ebert says? Is it because it is so unattractive? Is it because we fear the same thing happening to us? Is it because it reminds us of the frailty of life and the inevitability of decline and death?

I wonder if the above questions are connected. I wonder if something is unattractively frail, does it bring to mind those typically buried thoughts about the fact that there will be a day when I am no longer walking this earth? Does Ebert’s drooping face remind us that we, too, will be unable to control our every movement, and our attractiveness? Will there be a day when the makeup does not cover the wrinkles, the scars, the age spots? Will we continue to cover it up and put it off, or will we accept it. Shows like Nip/Tuck and movies like Network suggest that we often do not have the courage to accept this fact; rather, we will put off the thought, opting instead for a strange attempt at eternal youth (Nip/Tuck) or escape into relational isolation via technology (Network).

Whatever the answer, we see there is hope in some who do not cover up the age, the ugliness, the inevitability of decline. Some will not color their hair a color long-gone from their heads until their sixty, some will not go under the knife to attain the body of a thirty-year-old when they are fifty-five, some will not avoid human contact for the cold lonely embrace of television, which neither judges nor affirms age or frailty.

Roger Ebert is one of those people, and we are indebted to his witness.

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