Ebertfest 2015 Day 0

Having attended the last fourteen Ebertfests, I have a pretty good idea of what the festival should be, and what works. That is why I am approaching the 2015 Ebertfest with some trepidation. While "Overlooked" was the overriding theme for many years, the real strength of the festival was the variety in the films. Sure, the festival has hosted many small, independently made character studies, but there was always a nice mix of films. During the early years Ebert would include a 70mm film, a free kids' film, a film containing a lot of music, a silent film, a documentary, and several festivals even had a horror film. Unfortunately the 70mm film and the free kids' film have been left out of the programming for several years now. They did sneak in a "kids" film last year with the delightful Wajdja, which was shown in the traditional Saturday morning slot.

So what does that leave? Well, we still have the silent film. There will always be a documentary film in the lineup. There is also the usual mix of foreign films-usually one or two European films, one or two African/Middle Eastern films, and one East Asian film. Nothing to complain about there, as the festival has exposed me to a lot of good/great foreign films that otherwise would have remained off of my radar. But this year...

Ebert was always good about selecting some "mainstream" films for the festival, the kind of films that provide a break from the usual (sometimes quite depressing) independent and European fare. This year's festival appears to be lacking in that regard, though maybe a couple of the films are "mainstreamish," without being known by me. I have not seen any of the films yet, not even A Bronx Tale, so I hope to be pleasantly surprised.

The most bizarre pick of this festival, and perhaps of all the festivals, is the selection of Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language. Why? Well, here is where Roger Ebert's stamp of approval is missed. Up until last year's festival, there was a comfort level with each and every film, because they were picked by Roger Ebert, and the vast majority of the time this meant a very good film was in the offing. That does not mean that everyone expected to love every film. I suspect that in a typical year a couple films were not everyone's cup of tea, but that was to be expected from a diverse slate. But in this case, there is very good reason to believe that Roger Ebert would not have liked Goodbye to Language. Here is what I imagine Ebert would write in reviewing this movie-

This film is an affront. It is incoherent, maddening, deliberately opaque and heedless of the ways in which people watch movies. All of that is part of the Godardian method, I am aware, but I feel a bargain of some sort must be struck. We enter the cinema with open minds and goodwill, expecting Godard to engage us in at least a vaguely penetrable way. But in "Film Socialisme," he expects us to do all the heavy lifting.

Actually, Ebert did write the above quote. It is contained in his one star review of a recent Godard film, 2011's Film Socialisme. It is not a stretch to think that the same words apply to Goodbye to Language, missing only the obligatory 3D dis that Ebert was famous for. Another-

What he lacks is a port of entry for the viewer. Defenses of the film are tortured rhetorical exercises in which critics assemble Godard's materials and try to paraphrase them to make sense. Few ordinary audience members, however experienced, can hope to emerge from this film with a coherent view of what Godard was attempting.

Again, that would seem to be an apt description of Goodbye to Language, right? Instead it is taken from Ebert's 2002 one star review of In Praise of Love. So, if the inevitable conclusion is that Roger Ebert would not have liked Goodbye to Language, then was there no room for it at the festival? I am not saying that. What I am saying is that the festival programmers should keep this in mind in the overall programming of the festival. Ebert wrote positive, if not glowing, reviews for many, many films. Some of those films should be at this festival. Unfortunately it appears that they only included two films that Ebert actually saw and wrote about. And other than the silent film, only one film in the festival is older than 2008. Shortly after Ebert died, the festival programmers alluded to a list of hundreds of films that Ebert had compiled as possible candidates for the festival. Well, what happened to that list?