Review: Life Itself

Long before there were movie review aggregator websites like Rotten Tomatoes and Meta Critic, before there were thousands of bloggers publishing their thoughts on movies each week, before they let everyday schlubs like me spout off about film on the radio, there was Siskel and Ebert and their tv show At the Movies. The tall, balding Gene Siskel and the short, heavier Roger Ebert came to our television every week to review three newly released movies. They popularized the “Thumbs up/thumbs down” method of assessing a film and for decades were the face of popular movie criticism. Siskel passed away in 1999 from complications related to brain cancer, but Ebert continued on for another fourteen years. Ebert himself dealt with cancer of the thyroid and salivary gland, eventually having his entire jaw removed which robbed him of his ability to speak. Despite that, he continued to write movie reviews and even found time to write and publish a funny, candid memoir called Life Itself in 2011.

Filmmaker Steve James uses the memoir as the basis for his documentary about Ebert, also called Life Itself. The film switches back and forth between telling Ebert’s life story and detailing his profound health struggles at the end of his life. James interviews Ebert in a hospital bed in Chicago, with the movie critic using a program on his laptop to speak the words he types. Interspersed with those candid moments are interviews with his wife, Chaz, old journalist friends, and film directors like Martin Scorcese and Werner Herzog, each of them describing the ways Ebert affected their lives. The movie is full of archival photos and footage of Ebert as a young firebrand journalist in college, as an egotistical media figure appearing on talk shows in the 80s, as a doting husband and adoptive grandparent later in life.

While the documentary is definitely affectionate toward Ebert, it also doesn’t shy away from some of man’s warts including his alcoholism, his bad taste in women as a younger man, and his clashes with his partner and rival, Gene Siskel. The funniest moments of the film come from the behind-the-scenes footage of their show At the Movies as they bicker and curse at each other while trying to shoot promos. Siskel insults Ebert’s weight and Ebert lords the fact that he won the Pulitzer Prize over Siskel. As someone who grew up watching their show every chance I got, I was floored and kind of tickled to find out what they were saying to each other during commercial breaks.  

It is fascinating and a little heartbreaking to see Ebert as a younger man full of fire and opinions and himself and then see him as an older man, completely silent and barely able to negotiate a few stairs. Steve James was still actively collaborating on Life Itself with Ebert and his wife when complications finally led to the movie critic’s death. The film ends with moments from the tribute to Ebert held at the Chicago Theater following his death. It was touching to see that large, beautiful theater filled to capacity, the entire crowd silently giving the thumbs up to the memory of Roger Ebert.

The documentary gives a kind but honest overview of one man’s life work. Ebert wrote about the movies for close to half a century and did more to popularize movie criticism than almost any other person out there. He was an important guy for people like me, and the film detailing his life, work, and loves is well worth watching.