For many UK film fans, critic Roger Ebert was not an obvious port of call. During my childhood he was one of two names that occasionally popped up above the titles on VHS covers (“Two thumbs up! Ebert and Siskel”), but he did not have the clout of, say, Barry Norman.
In the years since, he has become one of my guides: for his essays about culture, and about life in general. If another man has written about either in a more human way over the past 40 years, I have not read him. “Kindness,” he wrote in his 2011 memoir Life Itself, “covers all of my political beliefs. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.”
It’s a kindness that runs through his work, and a 2014 documentary about him (also titled Life Itself) which I recently caught up with. As a critic, he focused on the small moments in the bigger picture, as we all should. He was not afraid to reconsider an opinion.
Ebert was an only child, born in the American midwest, and showed early promise. He was editor of his university paper, before moving to the Chicago Sun-Times, where he was film critic from 1967 until his death two years ago. In 1975 he became the first film critic to win a Pulitzer prize.
Ebert’s life had its lows: alcohol addiction (he had his last drink in 1979) and illnesses, including the cancer that took his lower jaw and his speech. But the highs were glorious, among them his marriage to Chaz – “the great fact of my life”.
His writing, always infused with a generosity and warmth, was a hard trick to pull off (many have tried). “For me,” he once said, “the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.” His work does much the same job.
