“To be sure, they sometimes do bad things, but the movie understands them and their flaws. Like great fiction, House of Sand and Fog sees into the hearts of its characters, and loves and pities them.”

— Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/house-of-sand-and-fog-2003 of House of Sand and Fog (26 December 2003)
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: It's so rare to find a movie that doesn't take sides. Conflict is said to be the basis of popular fiction, and yet here is a film that seizes us with its first scene and never lets go, and we feel sympathy all the way through for everyone in it. To be sure, they sometimes do bad things, but the movie understands them and their flaws. Like great fiction, House of Sand and Fog sees into the hearts of its characters, and loves and pities them. … "House of Sand and Fog" relates not a plot with its contrived ups and downs but a story. A plot is about things that happen. A story is about people who behave.
To admire a story you must be willing to listen to the people and observe them, and at the end of House of Sand and Fog, we have seen good people with good intentions who have their lives destroyed because they had the bad luck to come across a weak person with shabby desires.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To be sure, they sometimes do bad things, but the movie understands them and their flaws. Like great fiction, House of …" by Roger Ebert?

Roger Ebert 264

American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter 1942–2013

Related quotes

“A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Address at the Dedication of the National Museum of African-American History & Culture, delivered 24 September 2016, National Mall, Washington, D.C. reported in the American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank. As Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20200221020146/https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbushafricanamericanmuseum.htm from the original https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbushafricanamericanmuseum.htm on 21 February 2020.
2010s, 2016

“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“The reason movies are often so bad out here isn't because the people who make them are cynical money hacks. Most of them are doing the very best they can; they really want to make good movies. The trouble is with their heads, not their hearts.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Quoted in Against the American Grain (1962) by Dwight Macdonald, p. 30

“You always love your dad.
You don’t always like your dad sometimes.
But granddaughters not only love THEIR dads — their grandpops — they ALWAYS like them, and that’s the GREAT thing.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2 February 2020, reported 21 October 2020 by Ali Swenson of AP News https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9596198679
2020, February 2020

“Economists can often be remarkably obtuse, failing to see things that are right in front of them. But sometimes a bit of obtuseness is not entirely a bad thing.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Development, Geography, and Economic Theory (1995), Ch. 2. Geography Lost and Found

“All of the character traits, which are in such great need of correction and cultivation—who will cultivate and correct them if we do not give heart to them and subject them to exacting scrutiny?”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Introduction

“I suffer the mortification of seeing myself attacked right and left by people at home professing patriotism and love of country who never heard the whistle of a hostile bullet. I pity them and the nation dependent on such for its existence. I am thankful, however, that though such people make a great noise the masses are not like them.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Letter to his sister Mary (15 December 1862) https://books.google.com/books?id=mUjQAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA505
1860s

“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“A pity she did not understand them!”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

"Odd Man Out", BBC TV profile by Michael Cockerell transmitted on 11 November 1995, on Margaret Thatcher's adoption of monetarist economic policies.
1990s

“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“To be sure, they sometimes do bad things, but the movie understands them and their flaws. Like great fiction, House of Sand and Fog sees into the hearts of its characters, and loves and pities them.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Roger Ebert 264

Related quotes

Related topics