Life Itself (Steve James, 2014): USA

Reviewed by Nadia Zetterberg. Viewed at the Antioch University’s Community Hall, Santa Barbara during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2015.

This film is a biography of the life of film critic Roger Ebert. The film is divided in to chapters as if it was a book. It also is based on Roger Ebert’s memoir published in 2011 with the same title as the film. The film starts off with Roger Ebert in a hospital bed. He is very sick and is being treated for cancer. In the next shot people close to Roger are being interviewed about his early life. Lots of old black and white photographs are being shown to tell his story and blues music is playing in the background. We get to know about Roger’s struggle with alcoholism and how he eventually managed to be free from it. The film jumps back and forth from interviews with people like Martin Scorsese about Ebert’s life to showing photographs and video clips from his lifetime but it also goes to showing his last weeks alive struggling with medical treatments and hospitalization, but also the lasting warm love between him and his wife Chaz Ebert. Roger Ebert explained how he no longer could speak, so his blog became his outlet. This was a very warm but sad movie. I enjoyed learning about Ebert’s life but it was sad and difficult to watch the parts where he was suffering from constant pain and illness. I admired the love him and Chaz shared though, that and Roger’s constant optimism was what made this movie so warm. I am glad I got to watch this movie at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival because it is not something I would usually choose to watch. But now that I have seen it I am very grateful I did. It is simply a beautiful story of an eventful life.