Ebertfest 2015: Opening Night

Ebertfest holds a special place in my moviegoing life because it was the first film festival I attended. The experience could not have been better. The 2001 festival, it’s third edition, featured an exceptional mix of good to great films, was hosted by a film writer I admired and aspired to be, and was down to earth in a way that felt identifiably Midwestern. This was not an industry event but a populist celebration of cinema in a university town. I was hooked, and It’s why I’ve come to Champaign, Illinois every April for fifteen years now.

It may seem strange to see a movie before going to opening night of the 2015 Roger Ebert’s Film Festival, but the Art Theater, a short walk from festival central at the Virginia Theatre, was playing GREY GARDENS, which I hadn’t seen. Ebert mentioned the Art as being important to him , and he certainly encouraged locals at the festival to patronize it those weeks when Ebertfest wasn’t co-opting their moviegoing time. Inside the lobby over the entrance is a mural with the hometown critic sitting in the front row to the side next to Groucho Marx. The seating location isn’t where you were likely to find Ebert when he was at the movies, but it seems right for him to have such a place of prominence, if not the best viewing angle, in a picture featuring stars of the screen. When he attended his own festival, Ebert was always the biggest star in the room no matter what Hollywood performer or filmmaker was present.

Perhaps it was my own reservations about this year’s festival lineup--I’ll explain those feelings on another day--but opening night felt more muted than any other year I can recall. It could be that the lack of a “big” film or guest tamped down some of the excitement in the crowd. Maybe it was that I knew what was coming. To start things off, a 3-D film was being shown for the first time in the festival’s history. Not just any 3-D film, mind you, was beginning the 17th festival but Jean-Luc Godard’s GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE (ADIEU AU LANGAGE). Unlikely as it seems to me, I’d seen it twice before. While I have enjoyed it primarily as an aesthetic experience, GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE struck me as a uniquely terrible choice to start the festival. Late Godard can be hard to penetrate intellectually. Playful as it can be, this rigorous cinematic essay fits the description of a difficult film to a tee. I did not expect GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE to go over well with this audience, which isn’t to say that I doubt their tastes but that this is no one’s idea of a widely appealing film that might ordinarily fill the first slot on the festival schedule.

On viewing GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE a second time I found it extremely helpful to have read David Bordwell’s unpacking of the dense film. Knowing how to watch can make a huge difference in appreciating it. My third viewing didn’t yield any major revelations, but it confirmed that Godard captures images of exceptional beauty. The shot of one hand washing another looks clearer than reality. During a shot of a boat going away from the dock the undulating water looks so blue and welcoming. The doubling and overlapping of images and use and locations of sound make for a thrilling cinematic experience even if I have a hard time making heads or tails of it. To the Ebertfest crowd’s credit, I noticed just a few walkouts from my vantage point in the balcony. Opinions may be voiced more strongly against it while folks wait in line to enter the theater over the next few days, but on this evening my impression is that people wrestled with the challenging work rather than dismissing it outright. Could it be my doubts about the film's reception were unfounded?

Todd Rendleman, Peter Sobczynski, Goodbye to Language's Héloise Godet, and Matt Zoller Seitz

The night’s second session was also something unprecedented at Ebertfest. Instead of showing a film, a Harold Ramis tribute took place. Clips were shown from ANIMAL HOUSE, CADDYSHACK, STRIPES, NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION, BACK TO SCHOOL, CLUB PARADISE, GHOSTBUSTERS, and GHOSTBUSTERS 2. Ramis’ widow Erica Ramis and producer Trevor Albert then joined Chaz Ebert and critics Glenn Kenny and Susan Wloszczyna to discuss his work from the earlier half of his career. Following the conversation were clips from GROUNDHOG DAY, STUART SAVES HIS FAMILY, ANALYZE THIS, MULTIPLICITY, THE ICE HARVEST, BEDAZZLED, ORANGE COUNTY, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, KNOCKED UP, WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY, and YEAR ONE. This portion was capped by a clip of Ebert and Gene Siskel reviewing GROUNDHOG DAY on their television show. The same people returned to the stage to talk about this part of Ramis’ filmography.

Context-free clips don’t exactly serve the work well, so I could have done without them even though I realize why they were incorporated into the program. I would have been content to listen to those Ramis knew and those who appreciated his talents talk about him. I really enjoyed seeing the Siskel and Ebert clip and would suggest knitting them into the festival when possible. How great would it be to watch the films at Ebertfest and follow them with pertinent reviews from the long-running TV show? Granted, these won’t exist with every film selected, and if there was a disagreement between the critics, some of the reviews might make for uncomfortable situations with a festival guest. Still, if done with care, this seems like a natural way of keeping Ebert’s voice in the festival.

Ghostbusters

GHOSTBUSTERS (Ivan Reitman, 1984)

When the university’s Board of Regents shut down their paranormal studies lab in GHOSTBUSTERS, Drs. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) direct their energies into a commercial enterprise. No one in New York City except for these newly unemployed academics can capture supernatural pests and remove them from the premises. They set up shop in a former fire station and wait for the calls to come pouring in.

With supernatural activity increasing across the Eastern Seaboard, the Ghostbusters have gone into business at the ideal time. Some of their clients are merely dealing with spirits making nuisances of themselves. Unusual phenomena, like eggs flying out of the carton and frying on the countertop, spook Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), but finding an ancient god of destruction’s portal to another dimension in her refrigerator indicates she better call in the professionals right away to examine her Central Park West apartment.

Although GHOSTBUSTERS requires a team effort to thwart the bad forces attacking the city, it’s really Murray’s film despite being written by Aykroyd and Ramis. His performance drips with insincerity, and much of the film’s humor flows from how unserious he is about the apparition invasion. Murray gives the sense that Venkman is in this parapsychology racket because it gets him close to highly suggestible women. His flippant attitude cancels whatever threats the ghosts, demons, or government officials might raise.

Each of the other Ghostbusters fails to be developed beyond his defining quality. Aykroyd is the fast-talking enthusiast. Ramis fills the role of the bookish Ghostbuster who designs their tools of the trade. Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddmore brings a religious perspective to the happenings, although with as little as Ray and Egon are showcased, it’s curious that GHOSTBUSTERS needed to add another paranormal investigator to take on the workload.

GHOSTBUSTERS provides a few jolts to confirm that the heroes are facing credible antagonists, but even those moments reside within the playful tone director Ivan Reitman maintains. The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man epitomizes the mixture of comedic scares the film strives to achieve. GHOSTBUSTERS’ most enduring image is an absurd comic variation on Godzilla and King Kong. The damage he wreaks is real, yet this cuddly manifestation of evil looks too silly to be anything but funny. The greatest weapon in GHOSTBUSTERS is the ability to shrug off all sorts of supernatural terrors with a few well-placed jokes.

Grade: B

Year One

YEAR ONE (Harold Ramis, 2009)

Following in the tradition of Mel Brooks' HISTORY OF THE WORLD: PART I, the comedy YEAR ONE features Jack Black and Michael Cera as primitive, incompetent hunter-gatherers bumbling their way through the beginnings of recorded history. In keeping with their established cinematic personalities, Black's Zed is a cheerful idiot while Cera's Oh is a neurotic weakling.

These best pals are already outcasts in their village before a literal banishment from the tribe verifies their feelings of inadequacy. After being expelled they stumble out of the forest and into a series of encounters with David Cross as the treacherous Cain, Hank Azaria's circumcision-fixated Abraham, and the libidinous and virgin-sacrificing population of Sodom.

Black and Cera's shticks are starting to feel as old as the ancient times their characters inhabit in YEAR ONE. Black's dialed-to-eleven foolishness and Cera's low energy performance produce diminishing results because this plays like a lazily ad libbed film reliant on their familiar comedic postures.

The screenplay is credited to director Harold Ramis and THE OFFICE writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, but none of the wit found in their best work is displayed here. More often than not they settle for moments like Black eating crap on purpose and Cera oiling up a hirsute Oliver Platt in the fruitless search for laughs.

Other than rooting the humor in scenarios from religious texts rather than riffing on pop culture references, there's little separating YEAR ONE from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer comedic wastelands like MEET THE SPARTANS and DISASTER MOVIE.

Seeds of a better film are planted in potentially more fertile ground when YEAR ONE connects jokes regarding how traditions may originate from accidents and the power-mongering of rulers, basically anything but divine decrees, but it's not clever or funny enough to unleash the sorts of potentially blasphemous challenges put forth in Monty Python's LIFE OF BRIAN. This uninspired Torah-lampooning sketch comedy is as arid and empty as the landscapes which the protagonists wander across.

Grade: D+