Roger Ebert makes an unusual candidate for a documentary: He was a writer, which isn’t cinematic, and not the swashbuckling kind. He didn’t go to war zones, just movies.
Still, in “Life Itself,” Steve James, the filmmaker whose basketball documentary “Hoop Dreams” Ebert relentlessly championed, makes use of a powerful weapon: The star, the lower half of his face ripped open by cancer, marching open-eyed toward death as James filmed Ebert’s reflections on life (many uttered by a voice synthesizer after Ebert lost the ability to speak).
Stills and videos tell the tale of Ebert’s good times in knockabout Chicago newspapering, at the tabloid the Chicago Sun-Times. Intent on being a “character,” he overdid the boozing, and once squired a “hired lady” to meet his pals in the bar. (In 1979 he took his last drink.)
Those of us in the trade may find the shop talk more fascinating than others do (I was tickled to learn Ebert sometimes wrote polished movie reviews in 30 minutes). What’s really uninviting is the grueling look at Ebert’s trials leading up to his death last April. The critic insisted on presenting his decline to the camera in clinical detail.
Why? I can’t answer that. But we’re talking about a guy who loved cinema, and if Ebert could never be Robert Redford, he could, in the end, play the lead in what is in part a horror movie.
To me, the heart of “Life Itself” is not Ebert’s “brave fight against cancer” (it’s not like he had much of a choice) but the congenial co-loathing of Ebert and his on-screen frenemy Gene Siskel.
Siskel, a tall and polished preppie who died at only 53 in 1999, once wore a handlebar mustache and hung out with Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Club. When he checks in, the movie stops being respectful and starts being fun.
At first the two performed together like a pair of matched coffee tables, and for five years they barely spoke off-screen, even in the elevator. But as they began to appreciate each other’s differences and learned the delicate art of one-upmanship, they became the Laurel and Hardy of criticism. Their chatty but smart PBS show “Sneak Previews” became unmissable — “a sitcom about two guys who lived in a movie theater,” notes Time critic Richard Corliss.
Did Ebert, as befits the title he chose for his memoir, which was borrowed for this film, leave us with a grand insight on existence? Not really — but Ebert’s honesty, his industry and most of all his bottomless enthusiasm for his métier make for a lasting monument.