A powerful new documentary about the life and work of Christopher Reeve premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival to tears and applause.
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,'' which received a rapturous standing ovation, traces the Superman actor's career and activities before and after the 1995 accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down.
Directed by Ian Bonhote and Peter Etedgui, the film includes an intimate collection of home videos and new interviews with Reeve's three children and actors who knew him. Reeve, who died in 2004 at the age of 52, narrated much of the film, his words ported from two audiobook versions of his memoirs.
It all started on New Year's Eve in 1994, when Reeve recalled that her personal and professional life were “perfectly balanced” until “everything changed in an instant.”
The actor was so allergic to horses that he had to take large doses of antihistamines to film the horseback riding scenes in 1984's Anna Karenina, but horseback riding remains an important part of his life. It became. In May 1995, he fell from his horse during an equestrian competition, and at the age of 42 he suddenly faced a crisis in his life.
While in hospital, Reeve was “unable to avoid her darkest thoughts” and hallucinations clouded her mental state, leaving her unable to move the area below her neck. There was a fight within his family because his mother thought he should be taken off life support.
His first words of clarity were to his wife, Dana. She answered: “You are still you and I love you.”
The film jumps back and forth from Reeve's early career to his life after the accident, and his life before and after the unimaginable event.
In the early 1970s, he had a “messed up” childhood with an acrimonious divorce when he was three years old, so the theater felt like home and he became drawn to it. “He felt like he was living on moving sand,” says his daughter Alexandra.
His old co-star Jeff Daniels recalls working with William Hurt on stage when the audition for Superman came up. “Don't go, you'll be sold out,” Daniels recalls Hart warning her.
But at age 24, a “skinny little kid” with shoe cream in his hair for a screen test won the role. His children remember the urban legend within the family. Apparently, his usually indifferent father ordered champagne when he found out, but it was simply the father's fault and his son landed a role in George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. That's because he thought he did. When he found out, he was not convinced.
“It was hard to breathe easily when he was around,” Reeve says of her father.
Reeve was eager to work with Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando, but remembers finding the latter difficult and uninteresting. While he was “making phone calls,” he “took $2 million and fled.” Reeve's case was different. “For Dad, Superman had to be art,” his daughter says.
Although the film was a huge hit, Reeve had no interest in a sequel (he called Superman IV a “disaster from start to finish”) and retired to the stage, making less commercially oriented films. was produced. His trappings and pressure of playing the character Superman also affected him. “I'm not a hero, never have been and never will be,” he said at the time.
His relationship with British modeling agent Gaye Exton, with whom he had his first two children, was strained by the public spotlight, and the pair never married and his career suffered. was criticized for appearing. Exton was “effectively a single mother.”
Their relationship ended and he soon met actor and singer Dana Morosino, whom they married in 1992 and had a son in the same year.
The film details how difficult Reeve's life was after the accident, which affected everything from her bowels to her bladder to her skin and speech. “He was so scared that he could die at any moment,” his friend Glenn Close recalled.
But rehab became a magical place for him, lifting him out of isolation with support from various celebrities including Robert De Niro, Katharine Hepburn and Paul McCartney. Caring for him in his home would end up costing him about $400,000 a year.
Advocacy became essential to him, and his new life showed him how unsuited the world was to people with disabilities. “America does not let its poor people support themselves,” he said in an impassioned speech at the 1996 Democratic National Convention.
But the film also details the tensions involved. He became the movement's best-known face, but his desire to support further research into treatments was “both inspiring and polarizing”, and his controversial use of visual effects to make it look like he was walking again. The commercial, which evoked a sense of humor, caused a backlash.
His three children play a prominent role in the documentary, and how his approach to parenting changed after the accident, deprioritizing often overly competitive activities and focusing on more personal It details how you came to work on them at the level. “I had to break my neck to learn this,” Reeve says.
Reeve developed an infection in 2004 and died soon after, and his wife died of lung cancer within a year. “That was that moment, and I've been alone ever since,” says his son Will.
His friendship with Robin Williams is a key tenet of the film, as the two graduate from Roommates in their 20s to become Hollywood A-listers in the industry. Williams became one of Reeve's closest and most loyal friends after the accident, hosting a party every year on the anniversary of his accident. Harrowing footage from Reeve's death shows a mentally retarded Williams struggling to regain his composure. “I always thought that if Chris was still alive, Robin would still be alive,” Close says.
The film ends on a hopeful note, celebrating the legacy of the foundation established in Reeve and his wife's name, and their three children continuing its work. Later in the film, Reeve's words remind him of what he once thought when someone asked him what a hero is, but his answer changed before and after the accident.
“A hero is an ordinary person who finds the strength to persevere despite overwhelming obstacles,” he said.
