I want to be a film critic. I want to be a real film critic. I cherish my chance to play at it for Cinapse. This is a great site, full of great people; all of them great movie lovers who want to write real criticism. When my desk is stacked high with DVDs and Blu-rays, I start to feel like I am actually doing it. I am in the early days of becoming an important and insightful voice in the world of cinema appreciation. That sensation dissolves more quickly than that stack does into my movie collection when I remember how much entertainment journalism has changed since… say, 1967; the year Roger Ebert began his career as a film critic. He was an old school newspaper guy, and he had already made a name for himself at his university publication before entering the working world and slowly becoming the most famous critic who ever lived. In my humble situation, at a time when criticism might be dying list-by-list on the Internet, watching Life Itself is as inspiring as it is discouraging. Could I ever be as good as he was? If I can’t have his career, I would be happy to settle for the rest of his incredible life.
Steve James’ undeniably appealing film is as complete as a biography can be in less than two hours. It begins with Ebert’s childhood, as it should, with his amicable relationship with his parents, but it doesn’t waste much time with these, or any other, unremarkable moments. James (director of Hoop Dreams and Stevie, among others) understands that in order to get everything worth mentioning from his subject’s enormous life into one movie, he needs to reach the early days at the Chicago Sun-Times, full of rip-roaring alcoholism, as soon as possible. This movie tells you everything you did and maybe did not want to know about Roger Ebert. It is a whole-portrait, a film that has nothing to say about the late critic that is not offered up as a simple fact by the people who knew him best. Nothing is skewed or manipulative. It would have been easy to make a fluff piece (Ebert was a great admirer of the director’s work), but the film is even-handed when dealing with even the darkest parts of his personality, especially his insane relationship with Gene Siskel.
When Siskel (extremely competitive) and Ebert (a big baby) began their landmark television show, Sneak Previews (the program would have several different titles as time went on), the two writers were already rivals. They were both extremely successful voices at competing Chicago publications, and despite their tempestuous on-and-off-screen partnership, they would go on to achieve even greater success together. They were suddenly the most recognizable faces in film journalism, and their seething contempt for each other evolved into a kind of seething respect. They brought out the best and worst in each other, and the portion of the film devoted to those days is maybe the finest material it has to offer.
As it came steadily to its end, I hated to think it would be over. I didn’t want it to stop, and although that might have had something to do with knowing the end of the film would have a lot to do with the end of Roger Ebert, I think it was mostly because I simply loved watching the movie. He had an incredibly fascinating life, and the movie highlights every funny, awkward, romantic, and moving facet with magnetic energy. It especially nails those moving moments.
Chaz Ebert earnestly relives her husband’s final moments with gut-wrenching detail. It isn’t graphic, or hard to hear (the rough stuff is all in the beginning when a nurse is using a vacuum tube to remove excess…whatever, from this poor guy…kind of hard to get rid of that yourself when you have no mandible or tongue), but listening to a woman explain what it was like to let go of someone she deeply loved was beyond heart-breaking. Once I mopped myself up off the floor, poured myself into a Ryan-shaped mold, and waited for the heat and pressure valves to activate and turn me back into a solid, I started thinking about what an incredible success this movie was. Not only does it thoroughly characterize this man as a critic, a human, and a celebrity, but in a way, it is a complete narrative, as well. For a guy who loved movies so much, it’s satisfying for me, someone who never really followed him, to know this project turned out to be the definitive movie of his life. He called the movies “a machine that creates empathy.” Well, his machine worked.
THE PACKAGE
Deleted Scenes: My wish came true! The movie wasn’t quite over. Every cut clip is fun, or really funny, but I can also understand the exclusion of each.
Sundance Tribute: Mostly material that was re-worked into James’ documentary.
Interview With Director Steve James
AXS: A Look At Life Itself: Doesn’t really offer much beyond the rest of the supplements.
Trailer
