Michael Wilmington, the brilliant film critic formerly of the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune, died January 6th, 2022 at the age of 75.
Hearing of this news has left me heartbroken. Lacking the national exposure of a movie critic like Roger Ebert, Michael Wilmington was my inspiration. The pinnacle of what I hoped to achieve as a movie critic. When I started writing about movies, back in the year 2000, and on this blog in 2008, my goal was to mimic Wilmington's writing style. I was under the impression his "voice" closely echoed my own. Obviously I failed miserably at that task.
When fellow Chicago movie critic Roger Ebert died I was struck by his death too. Being a pop culture icon I was able to write a tribute to him for the Milwaukee Shepherd Express. I'm not able to do something similar for Michael Wilmington. While Wilmington lacked Ebert's name recognition he didn't take a back seat to any critic in terms of his passion for cinema and his vast, seemingly endless knowledge of her history. In fact more times than not his knowledge was superior than others. That is what also makes Wilmington's death cut such a deep wound. When Roger Ebert died I said film criticism died with him. I could have easily said the same of Michael Wilmington. Who is left? Gone are Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, and now Wilmington. Who is around today that views cinema as the art form it truly is? Who intellectualizes about film? Who finds cinema worthy of such deep discussion? Who holds movies to a high artistic standard? Today the "movie critics" are what I dismissively refer to as - time after time on this blog - sheep. They all bow to political correctness and left-wing political activism. They are not interested in cinema's history. They don't believe in artistic merit. They think comic book movies are art! They write from a fan's perspective. They have no standards or more aptly, very low ones.
What makes a great movie critic? For me, the writer must display a knowledge of the history of cinema. The writer must know who D.W. Griffith was, Edwin S. Porter, George Melies, Rene Clair, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akiria Kurosawa, and Ernst Lubitsch. The writer must be able to name five movies each filmmaker directed without using google as a research tool. In addition to which, they must have standards and believe in artistic merit. That is what I found in Michael Wilmington's movie reviews. When you read a review by Wilmington for a particular director you understood who that director was. How the movie fit into their cannon of work. How the movie contributed to the themes the director previously explored. It was a crash course history lesson. I would always jot down movie titles referenced in his reviews and use them as video store recommendations. I've tried to do the same. I've tried to give my readers an understanding of a director's work and life. That is all Wilmington's influence. It is also why I've been accused of often reviewing the director and not the movie.
I didn't know Wilmington personally. I would run into him every so often at the Chicago International Film Festival. I would be amazed by how the man would sit down in the theater and no one would recognize him, coming up to him to say hi. All I can provide you with are my personal reflections of the man.
Living in Chicago, a city that is a two paper town, there was a time I would buy both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune every Friday to eagerly read the movie reviews of my two favorite critics - Ebert (the Sun-Times) and Wilmington (the Tribune). I grew up in a Sun-Times household but when I "discovered" Michael Wilmington, I had to do the unthinkable and bring a Tribune into our house. My family didn't care for the Tribune's politics but that didn't matter to me. There was the movie critic that wrote great reviews and I had to read them. It was worth upsetting my parents over. Remember, I'm old enough to have lived in a world pre internet. In those days you had to buy the newspaper to find out what was in it! No digital subscriptions back then.
While reading those reviews Wilmington introduced me to international filmmakers whose work I would come to deeply admire and cherish. Filmmakers like Claude Chabrol, Theo Angelopoulos, Abbas Kiarostami, and Manoel de Oliveira. Wilmington would present these men as great artists, highly distinguished filmmakers. I would also be struck by how different Ebert and Wilmington viewed these filmmakers. For example, while Ebert liked Claude Chabrol's work he could never bring himself to recognize anything other than "Le Boucher" (1972) as a masterpiece. Whereas Wilmington would highly praise practically every Chabrol movie that was released. I remember reading Wilmington's review of Chabrol's "The Flower of Evil" (2003), which he gave four stars, and rushing to the Music Box Theater that same day to see it. I eventually loved it also and placed it on my top ten list that year. Ebert didn't have an appreciation for the great Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos' work. At least not in print. The one time he wrote a review for an Angelopoulos film was "Ulysses' Gaze" (1997), which Ebert called "a bore" and gave one star. Wilmington, by contrast, gave it four stars and called it one of the year's best films. Had I strictly followed Ebert's recommendations to the tee I never would have seen any of Angelopoulos' work. "Gaze" is probably my favorite Angelopoulos film. I even placed it among my favorite films of the 1990s. I also would have never seen any of Abbas Kiarostami's work. Ebert found the brilliant Iranian filmmaker's work lacking, to say the least, however, Wilmington championed him repeatedly. It was because of Wilmington I saw Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry" (1998) and "The Wind Will Carry Us" (2000), both of which Wilmington placed on his top ten lists. In a subject close to my heart, Wilmington would also champion Hungarian cinema, writing about filmmakers Bela Tarr and Miklos Jancso. In fact, the last time I saw Wilmington was at a screening of Tarr's last movie, "The Turin Horse" (2013) at the Chicago International Film Festival. Ebert would never write about either filmmaker or Hungarian cinema in general. He did eventually include Tarr's "Werckmeister Harmonies" among his "Great Movies" but it was because of Wilmington I took my first plunge into Tarr's work and saw "Damnation".
I was deeply disappointed when Wilmington was being pushed aside at the Chicago Tribune to make room for stage-critic-turned-movie-critic Michael Phillips back in 2005 (supposedly to appeal to younger readers). Phillips, who is still at the Tribune, lacked Wilmington's passion and knowledge. The film coverage in the paper began to lack too and after many years as a Tribune home delivery subscriber I eventually decided to cancel and switch to the Sun-Times. It is because I am a current Sun-Times subscriber I missed reading about Wilmington's death. The paper made no mention of it. Richard Roeper, the "movie columnist" for the paper, didn't even write anything! For the record, the Sun-Times' movie section isn't so hot either.
Wilmington left the Tribune in 2008 and began writing for the website MovieCityNews. Even though he didn't write as often as he did while at the Tribune (pre Phillips) it was cause for celebration. I still had Ebert and Wilmington for movie recommendations. In 2016 he stopped writing altogether, leaving a void in my life. Up until learning about his death I would google search his name to see if he started writing for any publication. Little did I know of his ill health, suffering from Parkinson's disease and breaking his hip this year.
What happens to film criticism now? I don't know and honestly don't think society much cares. The trusted voices are now all gone. Today I look out for articles by Rex Reed at the New York Observer, Leonard Maltin, over at his own website, and Elizabeth Weitzman at The Wrap. Reed, ever since the pandemic began, has slowed down his schedule. He was at one time the sole critic at the Observer but that is no longer the case. He doesn't even make an annual top ten list anymore. No longer at the New York Daily News, Weitzman is not the chief critic at The Wrap unfortunately and therefore doesn't review every new release. Maltin has moved up in my estimation, mostly by process of elimination. I now find value in him as a film historian, keeping the name of classic cinema alive. That means something to me in today's world and takes on new importance as left-wing activists try to erase film history.
Michael Wilmington will be sorely missed. Please try and read his reviews tonight. I'd recommend reading his annual top ten list for some good movie recommendations. Then, follow my path, read what Wilmington had to say about Chabrol, Angelopoulos, Kiarostami and de Oliveira. I'd also recommend his review of Emir Kusturica's dazzling "Underground" (1995) and his reviews of American movies directed by filmmakers like Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers, and Woody Allen.
For more biographical information on Wilmington's life, read the obit written by Michael Phillips, published in the Chicago Tribune by clicking here.
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