Crucially, James’s intelligent, moving film charts Ebert’s early adoption of the internet – a resource that some thought would kill film criticism, but which merely widened its scope, giving Ebert back his voice when his body failed him. Werner Herzog calls him “a soldier” and describes a strange epiphany when walking over his star on Hollywood Boulevard Errol Morris wonders whether he would have had a career were it not for Ebert and Siskel’s early support.
Intimate footage of Ebert’s later battles with cancer (the loss of his entire lower jaw couldn’t dampen his spirits) paints a picture of a man surrounded by a loving family in whose company he found great happiness his wife, Chaz, is a magnificent presence – an example of the best in human nature, a subject to which Ebert returned compulsively in his writing. Elsewhere, Martin Scorsese struggles hilariously to find anything good to say about Russ Meyer’s Ebert-scripted exploiter Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but remains a passionate advocate of Ebert’s incisive criticism, which he credits with spurring him on at key moments in his own career. This terrifically life-affirming documentary from director Steve James – whose first feature, Hoop Dreams, Ebert championed – puts both sides of the argument, and unearths outtake footage which suggests that the Roger/Gene rivalry was no on-air contrivance.
0 kommentar(er)
