LIFE ITSELF directed by Steve James. A VSC release. 120 minutes. Opens Friday (July 11) at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNNN
Roger Ebert’s life and legacy are explored with tremendous affection in Steve James’s marvellous documentary. But James doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of his subject’s death, which gives the film its real power.
Narrated with passages from Ebert’s memoir of the same name (read by sound-alike actor Stephen Stanton), Life Itself efficiently covers the biographical basics – young Roger getting the critic’s spot at the Chicago Sun-Times, writing Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls for Russ Meyer, winning the Pulitzer, getting sober, becoming a pop celebrity alongside Gene Siskel – in order to get to the good stuff: Ebert’s marriage to Chaz Hammelsmith at age 50, which reconfigured his life and made him an even more honest and emotional writer. And the third act of his life, when illness robbed him of his ability to speak, is examined in painful, unflinching detail.
James started shooting four months before Ebert’s death, and obviously the images of an exhausted, deteriorating Roger stubbornly, wordlessly arguing with his wife over what he is and isn’t willing to do form the documentary’s most piercing moments. Like the man himself, it’s unfailingly honest and profoundly insightful.
