Life Itself Review

by A.J.

Last year on April 4^th, just before my birthday, I received the news that Roger Ebert had passed away. I was saddened more than I thought I could be by the death of someone I never knew. I did meet him once at a book signing in New York; I wrote about that experience and my thoughts and feelings about Roger Ebert in my tribute last year. I only met him once, never knew him, but I will always miss him.

This year, just before my birthday I received in the mail a messenger bag, t-shirt, and gift card to Steak ‘n Shake from the Life Itself production team for a small donation to the Indiegogo.com campaign to cover post production costs of Life Itself, the documentary about Ebert by filmmaker Steve James.

I was able to watch Life Itself streaming online in concurrence with its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, an additional perk of contributing to the production. I’m not sure at what point during the documentary I realized that I would not be able to give this film an “objective” review. Fortunately, as Ebert was apt to remind everyone, there is no such thing as an objective review.

It seems obvious that Steve James would be the one to make this film. James’s 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams was championed heavily by Siskel and Ebert. The Criterion DVD edition of Hoop Dreams contains their initial enthusiastic review, a special segment in which they accuse the documentary wing of the Academy Awards of corruption after Hoop Dreams was not nominated for Best Documentary (it turns out they were right), and the special show in which Ebert names Hoop Dreams the best film of the 1990’s.

Life Itself takes the structure of Ebert’s memoir of the same name beginning with the straightforward linear of childhood, youth, early career, before beginning anecdotes, jumping to the present, then back to the past. There are interviews with friends and colleagues and filmmakers. Roger Ebert was able to become friendly, if not friends, with filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog and others. He helped a few personally when he could and they tell their stories too. There is, of course, a portion about Gene Siskel and the creation of the show that made them famous, even to people that didn’t follow critics. I do wish there was more about the show and its different versions, especially its final incarnation on PBS, and also how he dealt with being famous for being a film critic, a relatively normal job.

If you are a fan of Roger Ebert, or movies, or journalism, you will enjoy this documentary. It is a fitting tribute and portrait of a life that touched and influenced the lives of people he never meant and influenced movies and filmmakers even though he never directed one. As you can imagine the tone of the documentary shifts as it covers Ebert’s illness, the loss of his voice, and his death. After he lost the ability to speak, Roger Ebert reinvented himself in the most wonderful way with his website, his blog, and then twitter. Even though he could not speak, you could read his words and there was his voice. Now that he is gone I can still hear his voice.