Ebertfest 2010, aka The 12th Annual Roger Ebert’s Film Festvial, kicked off tonight with the Opening Night Gala at the President’s House. The gala, as per usual, featured some swank appetizers — among the offerings: mini Maryland crab cakes, pork medallions and these amazing almond macaroons. If I was a blue-haired old lady with a giant macramé handbag, running sneakers and an Ebertfest ballcap, I might have dumped a whole plateful of those macaroons in my bag for later.
New this year: Roger has invited many of his “Far Flung Correspondents” to the fest. The FFCs are a slew of film commentators from around the globe who are regularly featured on his Journal, and include voices from Canada, Egypt, India, Mexico, Pakistan, the Phillipines, South Korea, Taiwan and Uruguay, and they offer persepctives on film that Roger’s huge US reader base might otherwise never even be exposed to.
A brief aside from talking about the fest itself: I have to say that I think Roger’s idea of bringing diverse voices into the often all-too-insular world of film criticism is nothing short of brilliant, and it’s a great example of expanding the idea behind this film festival to begin with — to bring together filmmakers, critics and lovers of film into the same place at the same time, mixing them up (shaken, not stirred?) and see what happens.
It’s such a simple, yet smart idea, to allow these critics from far-flung places both a place to share their points of view and engage in the discussion of film. Beyond that, it shows how much Roger has grown to understand and use the power of the internet as a virtual tool, something he started doing a couple years ago when he started his online journal as a way to expand his website beyond mere reviews and into conversation. He’s adopted and adapted to the use of Twitter as a way of further engaging with his readers, both fans and detractors. Anyone who thinks Roger Ebert is an old fart who doesn’t “get it” isn’t paying attention; he is constantly seeking new ways to generate discussion about film and experimenting with ways to bring people together to do so.
Now, back to the fest itself. The opening night films were Pink Floyd The Wall (which, as David Poland mentioned in his post, was unfortunately not screened in 70mm as it was supposed to be). Much as I wanted to catch The Wall, I took the redeye flight from Seattle at 1AM this morning, finally got checked into my hotel room around 3PM, and hadn’t had anything all day other than coffee. I desperately needed more food than the yummy gala appetizers, so Elvis Mitchell and I headed over with his host, Wendy, and her husband to Steak ‘n’ Shake, a midwest staple, for burgers. The burgers were just so-so, but the company was great. Then it was off to the Virginia Theater for the screening of Swedish director Roy Andersson’s You, The Living, which I’d never seen.
Wow. This film is brilliant, and I’m grateful to have been able to see it on a big screen in a theater. A series of vignettes in the entertwined lives of people living in the same town, the film is on the one hand an exercise in minimalism, exquistely framed and shot in muted pastel tones that reflect the bleakness of the lives on which Andersson focuses his lens, and on the other an exercise in patience and exacting perfectionism, in that it took (according to the post-film panel discussion) some three years to shoot, include two months just to build one particularly challenging set piece. Talk about dedication to wanting a film made just the way a director wants it.
You, the Living is a study of the human condition through the lives of these tragically flawed and sad people who are stuck in the endless rut of their mundane lives like hamsters endlessly and pointlessly treading a wheel in a cage. They are so stuck, each of them, in their own heads and their own dreams that they can’t make real connections with each other because they are each seeing and hearing only what they want to see and hear. Characters talk without being heard, act without being responded to, exist in individual vaccuums orbiting around each other, occasionally bumping into each other but never connecting on deeper levels.
It’s a very dark and tragical take on human nature, and yet, like many brilliant writers, Andersson finds the humor inherent even in the sorrow, the bleakness, the aching lonelines of his characters’ lives, and it’s a very funny film. These are people that, by all rights, we ought not to care about after meeting them only through one or two short vignettes with no overarching clever plot to tie all the pieces together; yet we do care about them, which is why the film’s closing scene (which reminded me, in a certain way, of Dr. Strangelove) is so devastating.
It’s one of the great things about this festival that you get to see films like this that you otherwise might ever even think of seeing, much less get to see on a big screen in a theater like the Virginia. Brilliant.
Tomorrow’s agenda: Up early (well, we’ll see about that) for an early morning meet-and-greet breakfast and hopefully catching all three films: Munyurangabo, The New Age and Apocalypse Now Redux, punctuated by coffee and chats with friends old and new and the always fun green room dinner, where you never know what fascinating people you’ll find yourself getting to know over a good meal — which is as much the point of being at Ebertfest as the films themselves.

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