Life Itself **** (2014, Roger Ebert) – Movie Review

Director Steve James’s documentary on the personal life, journalism career and death of renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert is insightful, entertaining, informative and heartbreaking. With his Siskel and Ebert TV show in the States, he was the most famous film critic there, but his fame is a great deal smaller in the UK.

The story of his early life in newspapers, in film criticism and then on TV with fellow and rival Chicago critic Gene Siskel is done beautifully. But it’s only half of the film. The rest documents in painful detail his struggles with cancer over seven years till his sudden death in hospital last year in 2013.

Around half the 120-minute film is about Ebert coping with a long protracted death from cancer. Maybe five minutes of this excruciating footage would be enough. It is respectfully done, but there’s no point in dwelling in this agonising detail on poor Ebert’s suffering and his poor, bewildered, loyal wife Chaz’s desperate, noble support.

Ebert handles his crippling illness by remaining unremittingly cheerful and burying himself in his work at the computer screen. Unable to speak after his jaw and throat are removed, he carries on writing till the day before he dies. it’s an important part of the Ebert story to see this. But a little goes a long way and it starts to feel intrusive.

Cutting this extended footage would give us much more time for the movies and Ebert’s views on them in a more opinion-led film that Ebert could have been proud of. As it is the best parts of the film are about the golden days with Siskel, detailing their bizarre love-hate relationship, with insights from the show’s various producers and comments from Siskel’s largely unimpressed widow. The duo bicker away gleefully like an old married couple. The out-takes from the show are particularly funny and revealing as well. They’re the best thing in the whole film.

The Siskel and Ebert show ends with Siskel’s death of brain cancer at 53, an illness he keeps quiet from Ebert, who is hurt by this decision. By the time Ebert can visit him in hospital, he’s already dead. Oddly, there’s no mention on Siskel’s replacement on Ebert’s show.

Ebert vows then if he ever gets cancer he will tell the world, which he eventually does in his blogs, and he also tells the world of his alcoholism and his renunciation of the demon drink through AA. He drank heavily in the early sixties when this was a regular thing among journalists. Now journalists drink sparkling water and OJ! There are no Eberts any more. No characters in the business, just nakedly ambitious pygmies.

This film concentrates on building Ebert up as a character rather than a film critic. That’s understandable and fascinating. Maybe that has more interest than film criticism to movie-goers, but I’d have liked loads more film clips and loads more of what Ebert thought about movie stuff.

Martin Scorsese, whom Ebert supported critically in the early days, and Werner Herzog appear to considerable effect too. They say some very nice things about Ebert but not everyone is totally complimentary, and the most penetrating view of the man here is ‘he was nice, but not that nice.’ After all Ebert’s support during the 70s, Scorsese was stung at the time and is still worrying over Ebert’s disregard of his film The Color of Money. That’s the power of film criticism!

By the way, we are reminded that Ebert wrote the screenplay of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but there’s no further mention of any efforts at screenwriting or imaginative writing. This is just one of the many questions Life Itself raises but doesn’t answer. Nevertheless, it’s still a warm and moving tribute to the great Ebert.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/