“Risky and masterful”: The actor Roger Ebert called flawless
He’s one of the most beloved critics of all time and when Roger Ebert made a statement it was worth listneing to. While the process of critiquing a new movie has been chastised and denounced by those making the films, Ebert turned writing a few hundred words potentially convincing you into either attending or avoiding a local screening of a new picture into art.
Perhaps the most enjoyable notion about Ebert’s skill is that he rarely backed himself into a corner. His appreciation or discomfort in a movie was rarely determined by genre or style; he was as happy to slap a high mark on a slapstick comedy as he was a serious think-piece from a new arthouse director. Ebert believed in the power of cinema, its power to entertain, its power to evoke emotion and to suspend time for its audience.
It may seem trivial, but this is a supremely important function because it means he held an attribute that all serious critics should hold: balance. Ebert was fair in his assessments, rarely allowing himself to be swept up in Oscars buzz or bamboozled by high-octane effects. While the latter wasn’t in play when the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady reached cinemas in 2011, it was quickly tipped as an Academy-Award-winning picture.
For the most part, Ebert was uninspired by the movie, seeing it as the supreme Oscar bait it was meant to be. “Director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan seem to have little clear idea of what they think about Thatcher, or what they want to say,” the critic effortlessly notes. However, there was one redeeming feature: Meryl Streep.
Ebert notes her “uncanny impersonation” of the former British Prime Minister but goes one step further and labels Streep’s portrayal, despite being “all dressed up with nowhere to go”, as being entirely “flawless”. To both discredit a movie, give it a low score, and yet still commend its lead actor as completely unimpeachable is perhaps Streep’s greatest triumph, trumping the Oscar she gained for the performance.
It’s not the only time Ebert has heaped praise on Streep. He adored her in 1982’s Sophie’s Choice, writing: “Streep plays the Brooklyn scenes with an enchanting Polish-American accent (she has the first accent I’ve ever wanted to hug), and she plays the flashbacks in subtitled German and Polish. There is hardly an emotion that Streep doesn’t touch in this movie, and yet we’re never aware of her straining.”
Six years later, in A Cry in the Dark, he was once again effusive about her talent: “In the lead role, Streep is given a thankless assignment: to show us a woman who deliberately refused to allow insights into herself. She succeeds… Streep’s performance is risky and masterful.”
Ebert was a unique critic, unflattered and unmoved by deliberate attempts to cajole a reaction or gain an award-laden trophy cabinet, but he certainly knew talent when he saw it, and he certainly saw it in Meryl Streep, no matter how terrible the movie she was in.
