Life Itself (2014)

Documentary on the life and work of the late popular film critic Roger Ebert. In fact production of this movie started just a few short months before Ebert's death, so Roger and his family are in this movie interacting with the filmmaker, Steve James, a documentarian whose work Ebert had praised. In the last years of his life Roger had lost his ability to speak, and in fact had lost jaw, so it can be kind of difficult to look at him. Though mute Rogers voice permeates the movie, and not just in archival footage or the fact that this movie is about him. You hear Rogers voice narrating from Life Itself, his autobiography written after he lost his speech. This 'new' narration from Roger actually is accomplished through archival material, decades of on air reviews, mostly delivered in the same tone of voice, allowed the film makers with the aid of computers to assemble a database of Roger saying most every word you could want. It was hopped before his death that this database could eventually serve to replace the 'Hawkingesque monotone computer voice' he used to verbally communicate with the world in his final years.

Though Roger Ebert is arguably the best known film critic of all time, I mean honestly who could you argue was more well known, and was part of the popular zeitgeist for decades I was surprised by how little I actually knew about the man as a man. Growing up as an only child, editor of his school paper at Urbana, adopting Chicago as his home, writing a screen play for Roger Corman, pioneering film reviewing on television, his late in life romance with is beloved Chaz, all are explored here. The only thing really left out was his time with his post Siskel review partner Richard Roper, though the way this film was structured narrative wise I can kind of see why they left him out. Life Itself is the kind of retrospective that Roger Ebert could be proud of, and it reminds its viewers about the great voice we lost at the movies. ***