In the summer of 2006, the film critic Roger Ebert — famous for his television show and the popularization of the “two thumbs up” rating system — lost the ability to speak. After a series of surgeries for cancer in his salivary gland, complications related to a burst carotid artery necessitated the removal of his lower jaw. Mostly confined to a wheel chair, he would continue to write, still for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he started in 1966, but more prodigiously on his blog and on Twitter, where his thoughts and ideas were freed from the shackles of the newspaper column and he could meditate on his life as a writer, a husband, and a man in the world.
“Life Itself,” a new documentary opening in theaters July 4, is the story of Roger Ebert told in this reflective mode. Based on his 2011 memoir of the same title, the film, directed by Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”), uses a combination of talking-head interviews with friends, family, and colleagues, along with email interviews James conducted with Ebert, spoken in the film by a digitized voice (Ebert, for the last few years of his life, would primarily interact through a computer program that would voice his typed responses). These dialogues are intercut with excerpts from his memoir, spoken in voice over by the actor Steven Stanton in a Midwestern twang that easily passes for Ebert himself.
Part of what makes “Life Itself” appealing, and ultimately sad, is that the film is very much a collaboration between James and Ebert. The two joke around about who is directing who, and Ebert is unflinchingly straight-forward in his responses to James’s questions and his desire for the camera to show the truth of his pain. But as the film begins to wind down, it becomes heartbreakingly evident that Ebert won’t make it to see the film about his life.
But James doesn’t manipulate “Life Itself” into a tearjerker — an easy route lesser filmmakers might have taken. Instead, the film is embedded with bittersweet undertones that make it feel less like a grim funeral than a barroom eulogy. It’s a film about life, not death, with a sweeping ending worthy of any Hollywood classic. Just the way Roger would have wanted it.
