If I thought about it, I thought about it as shtick. I didn’t grow up in Chicago, so I didn’t read the Sun-Times, and I didn’t really watch the show. James kind of foregrounded the documentarian’s imperative of telling the truth by not flinching from showing something that most people would consider visually disgusting. I can be a very squeamish person, but it didn’t make me squeamish. My viewing partner was really struck by the visuals of Roger Ebert’s broken body, the fact that you could literally see through his jaw. Yet most of the time we see them kind of yelling at each other, resenting each other, and how often do we see that kind of complex, adult relationship rendered that richly and that effectively? And Siskel dies and Siskel’s wife, who was kind of a great on-camera presence, talks about how Roger said he loved him, he had a closer, more loving relationship with him than with any other man. And he uses that footage to show a very complex relationship between two grown men. James introduces one of the most famous things about Roger Ebert, the thing most of us would have known about him before he got sick and developed a different kind of public profile, which was this contentious relationship with Gene Siskel, very late in the film, when we’ve already established him as an interesting, flawed character and can enter into what could have been cliché from a perspective of a much richer understanding. Watching it the second time with my girlfriend-which is a very profound experience because this is also a great love story, among many other things-I really appreciated how he kind of layered the storytelling and how it snowballs, just keeps kind of picking up layers and layers of meaning. And just the normal, sort of collage work of documentary-making was just done really well.Īs a historian, I really appreciate archival work, going back into The Daily Illini, luxuriating over the photographs all over his favorite bar, brilliant use of the outtakes. There’s a cinema verité element to it in the classic sense, in the sense that the filmmaker announces “I am making a film, the act of turning on a camera is an event.” One of the early scenes, I think one of the first actual live scenes, is Roger Ebert insisting that he turn the camera at the mirror, which reminded me of the famous last shot of Haskell Wexler’s “ Medium Cool.” There’s a certain point in which he’s kind of losing his steam and makes a demand on Steve James-“This is not only your film.” Any documentary is not only the maker’s film. And then uses that to think about documentary as a collaborative art. Steve James does a lot of different things: He structures the film according to an interview, this online exchange he has in writing, and kind of structures some of the flashbacks and biographical information around that. It was a really impressive piece of storytelling via bricolage by a master at the height of a lifetime of practice. It’s a less straightforward autobiography than a collection of essays loosely around the chronology of his life.Īnd that gets to another thing I find amazing about the movie is that formally, it was really impressive. I’ve never seen that expressed so effectively in a piece of art. “Life Itself” is kind of about negotiating those two stark realities of human existence. How to practice his citizenship and his craft. In his case, whether to drink or whether not to drink. And then some parts of our lives are chosen. It has this amazing sensibility that’s kind of marked out by that one quote, which is that some parts of our life are given, whether it’s your talents, your preferences, your proclivities, maybe even your ideological proclivities, your body, your parents, your upbringing, your health, and you can’t do anything about that other than make sense of it and accept it. It kind of speaks to his wisdom and generosity, but the whole film is a portrait of this guy, this man, Roger Ebert, and the wisdom he’s been able to achieve. I mean that’s what writing and reading is all about and what art is all about. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.” Which is amazing itself. We’re kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. The film includes this quote: “We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. I think, just on the level of content and story and message, I found it profound. The movie: “ Life Itself,” Chicago documentarian Steve James’ 2014 film about the life of Roger Ebert, made with the great film critic’s cooperation during the last days of his life.Ī lot.
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