Like the age we live in, this movie is aggressively vacuous and narcissistic.
A good biography uses the particular to teach us something more general. It uses the individual subject to dig up some truths about their life that apply not just to that particular individual, but also to the world we live in. To Life Itself, you could say.
So a biography of Napoleon, ideally, shouldn't just teach us about Napoleon's particulars; it should teach us about France, Revolution, War, Power, Love, Death, Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, &c. And preferably how this all relates to the world we live in today.
This biopic documentary about Roger Ebert taught us something about Rogert Ebert, his personality and quirks, but hardly anything more. We learn nothing about film, nothing about film criticism, and hardly anything about TV or show business. We learn about almost nothing that related to the world Robert Ebert lived in and absolutely nothing about the world we live in.
All this movie basically says: 'Me! me! me! me!,' but about someone else. We love films like this, I'm sure, because we're secretly hoping that, when the time comes, someone will lionize and eulogize us in the same way. It's a sort of 'projected narcissism'.
That this documentary is universally acclaimed is telling of age we live in.
A good biography uses the particular to teach us something more general. It uses the individual subject to dig up some truths about their life that apply not just to that particular individual, but also to the world we live in. To Life Itself, you could say.
So a biography of Napoleon, ideally, shouldn't just teach us about Napoleon's particulars; it should teach us about France, Revolution, War, Power, Love, Death, Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, &c. And preferably how this all relates to the world we live in today.
This biopic documentary about Roger Ebert taught us something about Rogert Ebert, his personality and quirks, but hardly anything more. We learn nothing about film, nothing about film criticism, and hardly anything about TV or show business. We learn about almost nothing that related to the world Robert Ebert lived in and absolutely nothing about the world we live in.
All this movie basically says: 'Me! me! me! me!,' but about someone else. We love films like this, I'm sure, because we're secretly hoping that, when the time comes, someone will lionize and eulogize us in the same way. It's a sort of 'projected narcissism'.
That this documentary is universally acclaimed is telling of age we live in.