A Life in Movies

Life Itself was not only supposed to have been a nominee for this year's Oscar for Best Documentary, it was thought by many to be the favorite to win the prize. But the Academy served up several surprises this year. The "whiteness" of the Acting nominees has been widely reported and criticized, as has the absence of The Lego Movie from the Best Animated Feature category. The omission of Life Itself is a lesser observed, but equally unexpected, development.

Taking its name from his own autobiography, Life Itself is a 90-minute look at the life and career of the famous film critic Roger Ebert. It covers his rise to prominence, his winning of the Pulitzer Prize (unheard of for a film critic), his oil-and-water television pairing with Gene Siskel, dedication to giving up alcohol, marriage, and unfortunate diagnosis with thyroid cancer -- which ultimately led to his death. Ebert gave total access to the filmmakers during what would end up being his final days, intent on having the same unvarnished realism in the telling of his tale that he looked for in the movies he loved.

To be honest, Life Itself feels far from essential entertainment. I don't think it makes any profound statements about... well.... "life itself." It's not exposing some aspect of modern life or history that few people know about; everyone knows who Roger Ebert was. But there is a reason Ebert had the respect of Hollywood and fans of movies. More than any professional critic (and certainly more than the amateurs, including myself), he would evaluate a film within its own context: what was that movie trying to achieve, for what audience, and how successful was it in attaining that? So to people who appreciated his work, Life Itself is at least an interesting, if perhaps cursory, look at what made the man tick, what gave him the outlook he had.

On that count, probably the most illuminating revelation of the film is that Ebert was an only child, explaining a lot about his prickly relationship with Gene Siskel. Ebert did not grow up having to share the spotlight, and did not have a brother to fight with; Siskel seemingly was the brother he never had, thrust upon him by some savvy PBS producer.

Life Itself is also perhaps illuminating as one example of dealing with debilitating disease, an affliction that cruelly robs someone of the ability to speak. Here is the real-life look at that, compared with the similarly-timed, dramatized version of it presented in the Oscar nominated The Theory of Everything. It is sad to witness, though perhaps precisely because it isn't being dramatized (and because Ebert had such a loving and supportive wife), it doesn't quite feel like as much of a tearjerker to the at-arm's-distance audience. Not that personal tragedies should be measured and graded, of course, but framing them within a film encourages one to do exactly that.

In all, Life Itself is a perfectly fine documentary. But it's not an exceptional one. I don't cry foul on its omission from Oscar consideration. It's not that I've seen any of the other nominees for comparison, but I simply feel that somewhere, there were likely five more worthy candidates. A nomination here would really only have been a way to honor Roger Ebert himself more than the film about him, and the Academy certainly has other ways it could do that. I give Life Itself a B-.