"I found it profound. The film includes this quote: “We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We’re kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.” Which is amazing itself. I mean that’s what writing and reading is all about and what art is all about. It kind of speaks to his wisdom and generosity, but the whole film is a portrait of this guy, this man, Roger Ebert, and the wisdom he’s been able to achieve. It has this amazing sensibility that’s kind of marked out by that one quote, which is that some parts of our life are given, whether it’s your talents, your preferences, your proclivities, maybe even your ideological proclivities, your body, your parents, your upbringing, your health, and you can’t do anything about that other than make sense of it and accept it. And then some parts of our lives are chosen. In his case, whether to drink or whether not to drink. How to practice his citizenship and his craft. How to treat other people. Life Itself is kind of about negotiating those two stark realities of human existence. I’ve never seen that expressed so effectively in a piece of art."