Yesterday was a sad day for people who like movies. The loss that’s getting the most attention is Robert Ebert, the beloved film critic. Like seemingly everyone, I adored Ebert’s writing. He was always lucent and he knew what, and why, he liked — an astonishingly rare gift, even for a critic. He wrote about popular film and art film with the same insight and wasn’t afraid to give a good review to a blockbuster or to pan something pretentious. He was also, judging by Twitter, a lovely human being. Popular film writing will never be the same.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala also died. She wrote the screenplays for most of the Merchant-Ivory films, including A Room with a View and Howard’s End, both of which garnered her Academy Awards. In her honor, A Room with a View is today’s fine romance.
Gorgeous. The cinematography, the setting, the acting, and oh the music! I have chills.
For fun, here’s Ebert’s review of A Room with a View, to which he gave four stars and of which he said, “It is an intellectual film, but intellectual about emotions: It encourages us to think about how we feel, instead of simply acting on our feelings.”
Thank you, Robert and Ruth, for showing so much passion about the movies.
Emma Barry 