Take a seat and recline to experience the work, life, and legacy of Pulitzer prize winning film critic, Roger Ebert. The 2014 biographical film Life Itself, the title of Ebert’s memoir, brings to light the physical struggle of thyroid cancer on the critic with much of the film taking place in Ebert’s hospital room. Life Itself was ubiquitously lauded, winning the Producers Guild, the National Board of Review, and the Broadcast Film Critics Association awards for best documentary in 2015. The film’s director, Steve James,  was nominated for an Academy Award in 1995 for best film editing for his documentary Hoop Dreams. Dreams  focuses on two inner city Chicago boys struggling "to become college basketball players on the road to going professional" (IMDb). The existential determination portrayed in the film in combination with Ebert's Chicago nativity cemented the film as one of Ebert’s favorite films of the 1990’s. This marks an intimate, mutually respectful relationship between director and subject. The intimacy exhibited between the writer and the recorder is crucial due to the state of Ebert's health. Life Itself begins somberly with the first shot of the film capturing a crowd taking pictures of a marquee that is eventually revealed to read “Roger Ebert: A Celebration of Life With Love From Chaz”. Chaz, the paramount relationship in the film and no doubt Ebert's life, became a widow after twenty one years of marriage to the critic. James planned for the film to be an adaptation of Ebert’s memoir before his sudden passing five months into production. The film’s angle adjusted to become a hybrid of the memoir and a document of Ebert’s hospital bed-ridden lifestyle, unable to speak, communicating with thousands of fans through his personal film blog with Chaz enduring the experience alongside him.

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The film proves its title in its scope of portraying Ebert's life. Life Itself explores Ebert’s relationship to religion, alcoholism, critical and film history, and love. The documentary is told through photos and videos depicting events narrated from Ebert’s memoir with a voice artist tasked with mimicking Ebert’s voice and midwestern accent (voiced by Stephen Stanton). This narration, while sometimes a little phony, fills in the cracks left behind after the ability to speak was taken from the natural talker. As sections of the memoir unfold, talking head segments from old Chicago classmates and colleagues divulge memories and insightful meditations on life. Several acclaimed filmmakers, such as Oscar nominated director Ava Duvernay and Oscar winning documentarian Errol Morris, express their graciousness towards Ebert for championing and expanding the reach of their first projects. The philosophy of criticism is displayed as highly debated and sacred to the artistic process. Friend and mentee of Roger Ebert, Matt Zoller-Seitz writes, “when critics review films, they bring the sum of their intellectual capacity and life experience to bear, along with whatever drama (or comedy) they're going through at that moment in time”. Ebert’s physical state and  at the time emphasized Seitz sentiment.

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As one of America’s most influential critics, the comparison of Ebert to other powerful critical perspectives was inevitable and sometimes seemed ingenuine. A moment in the film caused this viewer to recoil in antipathy. In comparing Ebert to other widely read critics, interview subjects debated the critical integrity of legendary film critic Pauline Kael. The contention lies in the assertion Kael was a a pseudo-intellectual and the film indulged "in a bit of Windy City defensiveness when it portrays… New York-based '60s and '70s critics as egghead types.” I agree with critic and mentee of Ebert, Matt Zoller Seitz's resentment towards an interview subject forcibly laughing, “F*** Pauline Kael!” Seitz further explains New York critics like Kael, “were as direct and democratically-minded as Ebert” (Seitz 2). This faux turf war over critical supremacy may reflect Ebert's feelings, but truthfully he admired and respected the hard-tongued critic. Disparaging the New York film critic when books she penned lie in view on Ebert’s shelf was incongruous to say the least and to be truly critical: it is sexist and illogical.

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Ebert may have been best known across the country for two aspects of his career: the televised criticisms with Gene Siskel and the trademarked “two thumbs up!” The two writers iconicized this gesture which eventually led to a much desired quote indicating a positive review. A "Two Thumbs Up!" review was short enough to apply to any advertisement or VHS cover. After the two critics' show became more widely broadcast, the inevitable fame forced Siskel & Ebert to be emblematic of critical reception. Both critics found perks and disadvantages in the outcome. Ebert was content with the masses reading his reviews, but understood he was only one in a class of many worthy voices. A "Two Thumbs Up!" pull quote became a necessity for easily marketable endorsements of films.

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Siskel, a competing critic, was seen as a playboy and often opposed Ebert’s opinions on their televised program.  The critics were equally unrelenting however, in their respective ways. Ebert said they saw themselves “as full service, one-stop film critics. We didn’t see why the other was necessary.” The exceedingly quirky critics maintained a mutual respect for each other, blossoming into great friends throughout their career even while constantly differing. The seriousness of the hard-headed men's fallouts only strengthened their reconciliations and future relationship. The main relationship in the film, however, is Ebert’s clearly devoted and loving wife, Chaz, who is constantly by his bedside.

 

Chaz is introduced while speaking to a nurse about Ebert’s transportation, worried about having to pass through the morgue a second time on their way out. This introduction both sets a tone of morbid levity and foreshadows as the idea of Ebert’s death becomes more absolute. Chaz recounts Roger’s final moments, wherein she learned he secretly signed a “do not resuscitate” order. Moments of great emotion, such as this, create intense empathy through exhibiting reality. Not only did Chaz loose her husband in this moment, but learned the secret, immediate reason for his passing. This viewer is conflicted in how to react in real life moments of high drama. In Ebert's review of Hoop Dreams, he clarified this feeling through his existential love of film, "A film like 'Hoop Dreams' is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and makes us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself." As a devout Chicagoan, Ebert's love for Steve James' Hoop Dreams is a meaningful connection in a film portraying his last months.  In fact, the titular phrase of both his memoir and this film are found in the review for James' 1995 documentary.

 

The film concludes where it began, the Chicago theater dedicating an event to Ebert’s life. Ebert was offered “the sun and the moon” from other publications such as The Washington Post, but he never left the windy city.  The final shot of the film is a hand drawn portrait memorializing Roger Ebert hanging beside renderings of other great Chicago characters. The gesture of glorifying Roger Ebert in a comfortable shadowy Chicago bar exemplifies the director’s admiration for Roger’s devotion to cinema and reverence for life itself.

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