Life Itself | The "Other" Film Spectator

Director: Steve James
Rating: R

Life Itself: A Review and Personal Eulogy

Roger Ebert is arguably one of the most influential film critics. Steve James’ Life Itself (2014), a poignant, intimate, honest, and celebratory documentary based on his 2011 memoir, chronicled Roger Ebert’s extraordinary life as a film critic who democratized film reviews and shaped the culture of film criticism and the filmgoing experience. The ubiquitous (and sometimes accursed) thumbs up and thumbs down trademark has become part of our cultural tapestry when it comes to seeing films. He was the first to introduce me to film criticism—especially as an art to be taken seriously.

When I think of earlier pioneers of film criticism that preceded Roger Ebert, I think of those who sat in the director’s chair such as the groundbreaking New Wave directors, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rhomer, and Jacques Rivette who started an intellectual movement in cinema criticism and style between the years 1958-1964 in Europe. They launched an aesthetic, theoretical, and intellectual evaluation of cinema as an expressive art form. Their publication, Cahiers du Cinema, became their platform for their ideologies in artistic filmmaking—but primarily for the elite, the academics, the auteurs, and the historians.

But Roger Ebert sat in the audience and spoke to us. His platform came in different forms that were easily accessible: The Chicago Sun Times, the Siskel and Ebert syndicated television show, and then a personal blog that began in 2008 and lasted up until his death. He created a casual forum in print, in television, and in social media, and the forum served as a unique discourse community that was not necessarily for the academics and the directors themselves, but for the greater public who found solace in the theaters. Over the years, he became the voice for the audience—and took film criticism to a different level that was pure, eloquent, insightful, and lucid. He was the Hemingway of pop culture film criticism. And from this, he also included a layer of prose that was intelligent, critical, intuitive, and philosophically poetic. The documentary weaves narrated excerpts from his Bonnie and Clyde review in which he asserts as “ a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful.” Films were something to be thought about seriously. As a result, his criticism echoed in the back of our minds before we made a decision to see the film even though you vowed you would not listen to what the critics had to say. Although I did not always agree with his pick of “great” films (Crash as“Best Picture” for 2005?), he still knew how to say it with style even though I thought Crash’s film style was forced. That was the power of film criticism.

I distinctly remember watching Siskel and Ebert on Sunday afternoons, and the critics would engage in the most thought-provoking banter about films. My favorite segment was the foreign films pick that struck an interest. It was the first time I was introduced to foreign cinema and I would ask myself: “where can I see that film?” The show became a pathway to other films. And now, when there is a film I needed to research, I can always go back to his blog to see what he had to say. Ebert admitted to seeing 10,000 films in his lifetime and wrote 6,000 reviews. Before his death, he used social media, which he once scoffed at, and bequeathed to us an encyclopedia of reviews that would be available at our fingertips. It brought me to the theaters and it brought me back to films from Bergman, Fellini, and Antonioni—films that started my passion for cinema, which I erroneously thought were long forgotten, especially in this age of cinema. But Ebert made the enjoyment of film timeless. (In his blog, he revisited Seventh Seal on April 16, 2000).

Not only did the documentary chronicle Ebert’s contributions to the evolution of film criticism and his rise to fame as a Pulitzer Prize winner, it also walked us through a painful journey during his darkest days such as his battle with alcoholism, obesity, and throat cancer that ultimately left him unable to speak. Ebert knew he was not going to be alive once the documentary was released. As a result, he wanted to be as candid as possible for his audience—much like his thoughts on a film. When the prognosis of his cancer was not optimistic, he still wanted to be revealingly intimate. He did not mind when the camera kept recording when he was feeling the pains of being fed through a feeding tube and when he could not get up a flight of stairs. In spite of the odds, the documentary continued to capture his positive spirit. He wanted to record life itself, and I knew he wanted it to be self-reflexive even in the most painful moments. Thus, the director, Steve James, whose films Ebert supported, became secondary in the filmmaking process. Ebert took it upon himself to make sure it was an honest, poignant, and intimate depiction of his life.

Amid the pain, there was also comic relief. Life Itself provided insight on the behind the scenes look at the Siskel and Ebert show and the mercurial, tumultuous and, at times, harmonious relationship between the two on a personal and professional level. Ebert confessed that he felt assaulted whenever Siskel disagreed with him. However, Ebert stated their disagreements in film made the show interesting. The show’s outtakes were the most revealing and entertaining. They chastised each other for not sounding too enthusiastic, not being able to adlib, not using the correct word. They were not just film critics; they were also each other’s critics. When the cameras stopped recording, Siskel and Ebert continued to debate about the films. Even when they differed on what they believed to be a great film, it still made them complementary because they shared the same serious and indignant passion for films.

They were also each other’s opposites. Siskel lived the refined and cultured life and spent time with the affluent. He graduated from an Ivy League and majored in philosophy, whereas Ebert hung out at taverns, traveled to Cannes, wrote a screenplay for B-movies, obsessed about women’s breasts on the screen, and remained a bachelor until he was 50. (Siskel at the time had already settled down when the television show took flight.) Although there was an obvious clash of personalities, there was a fraternal relationship between the two. Ebert recalled in his memoir that they were intensely aware of each other whenever they were in the same room. Their passion for cinema was what connected them together—fraternally and professionally.
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The documentary also provided different interviews from other film critics such as A.O. Scott who respected Ebert’s groundbreaking contributions to film criticism, and family members, more specifically, Chaz Ebert, his wife, who remained strong and accepting throughout her husband’s brave and painful battle with cancer. She discussed Ebert’s DNR that was filed unbeknownst to her along with the moment of his death in which she described as a moment of calm.

Martin Scorsese who also produced the documentary recalled Ebert’s review of one of his earlier films when Scorsese was only 25 years old. Ebert called him the next Fellini (although I beg to differ). Throughout Scorsese’s filmmaking career, the review became an inspiration for him, which generated a friendship between the two of them. Scorsese also gracefully accepted Ebert’s bad review of The Color of Money in which Ebert did not waver or equivocate. He called it a “disappointment” because “it [didn’t] have the interior energy, and the drive, and the obsession of most of the best Scorsese films.” Regardless of his loyalty and commitment to a director, Ebert can still be brutally honest.

The pressure to create a film about a renowned film critic is great, but director Steve James delivered in a well-structured, visionary style that transcended the hybridization of biography-documentary. In Life Itself, James allowed Ebert to sit in both chairs—the director’s and the audience’s— in order to capture an awareness of the film’s artifice that transpired into a film that was raw, celebratory, engaging, poignant, and most of all, inspiring.

July 18, 2014