Roger Ebert is undoubtedly the most popular mainstream film critic in American history. People who usually don’t follow film know his name.
I work at a coffee shop in UF Health Shands Hospital and once, a young patient, upon overhearing me tell a co-worker I wanted to be a film critic, cried out “Like Ebert!” He was the sole reason film criticism moved into the mainstream and continues to exist there. As an aspiring critic, there has been no other I have read or respected more.
Ebert is the subject of the documentary, “Life Itself,” which opened at The Hippodrome State Theatre Friday. It’s based on his memoir of the same title.
Directed by noted documentarian Steve James, the film covers in equal parts Roger’s declining health in a Chicago rehabilitation facility and his rise to fame. True to its name, “Life Itself” is funny, devastating, heartwarming and hard to endure.
My last descriptor is not a knock but rather a fact: Ebert had his entire lower jaw removed due to cancer, and so the footage of him in the hospital is not only gruesome but also very sad, because the film shows us that Ebert was a man who spoke and laughed a lot.
More than once during the film, I looked away. I watched this with my dad, whose own father had gone through a period of decline followed by death in the hospital. Ebert’s predicament really struck home for us.
My greatest worry going into this film was that it would be a syrupy portrait of the man, that James would be too intent on memorializing his legacy to honestly cover all sides of his life.
To my relief, that was not the case at all. The film describes Ebert’s fight with alcoholism, the accusations that his brand of criticism was middlebrow and pseudo-intellectualist and his contentious and controlling relationship with fellow critic Gene Siskel. While this is undoubtedly a film that praises Ebert, it doesn’t do so unreservedly.
To my surprise, I also laughed a lot. Many of the interviewees were hilarious, particularly two very old friends of Ebert’s (The line “F**k Pauline Kael!” brought me to tears).
One of the most inspiring things in the film was what a great sense of humor Ebert himself displayed even through a computer program he typed into.
“Life Itself” was that kind of movie – funny and inspirational even through tragedy. I am usually not a fan of documentaries, but I give this one two thumbs way up.
[A version of this story ran on page 12 on 7/24/2014 under the headline "‘Life Itself’ shows a life well lived"]
