Christopher Reeve was most known for the four films where he played the comic book character Superman. He fought against typecasting with some success. His greatest fight, however, was when he suffered a devasting accident that left him paralyzed. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, tells his tale of life pre-and-post accident, revealing a complex figure who found courage to overshadow that of the Man of Steel himself.
Using home movies and interviews both current and archival, Super/Man chronicles Christopher Reeve's life and career. His youngest son Will Reeve states that he has weak memories of his famous father, as he was not yet three when Reeve took to the horse show that brought about his paralysis. Most of Will Reeve's memories come from talking to his older half-siblings Matthew and Alexandra or from the home movies Super/Man shows us.
In fact, Will Reeve celebrated his third birthday on June 7, 1995, eleven days after Reeve's devastating spinal cord injury. Reeve, devasted emotionally and physically from his paralysis, contemplated suicide. His wife, Dana, told him that while she would support whatever decision he made, "You're still you, and I love you". That was the trigger that kept him going. He was also aided in his emotional recovery by his friend and Julliard classmate Robin Williams, who could always get him laughing.
Seeing the effects of spinal cord injury, the reality of life for the disabled, and his own longstanding commitment to activism, Reeve now found a new purpose. He would channel his energy and work to making life better for the disabled. Dana, the light of his life, eventually got Reeve to have a dual focus: tomorrow's cure and today's care. This especially became important when he got pushback from members of the disabled community. A television commercial that showed him walking outraged certain disabled people, who took the notion that their lives would improve if they had no physical limitations as an insult.
However, despite his activism mixed with directing and acting work (such as his Rear Window remake), Christopher Reeve could not escape the physical damage. On October 10, 2004, Christopher Reeve died, almost ten years after his near-fatal accident. Will Reeve endured a more shocking event when his mother, Dana, died of lung cancer almost two years later despite her being a non-smoker. The now-Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation goes on.
Anyone who might think that Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is a hagiography on Reeve will be surprised by how it does not paper over the less positive aspects of Reeve's story. I can argue that it does downplay his part in the critical and commercial failure of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (he does have a "Story By" credit and was at least initially keen to use Superman IV to promote an anti-nuclear weapons message). He also got taken to task by sections of the disabled community for his advocacy for a cure.
There are also actions in his personal life that look dismissive, even cold. His older son Matthew, the first of two with Reeve's longtime partner Gae Exton, recalls that Christopher Reeve went off to a ski holiday in France the day after he was born. This revelation is not sensationalized or treated with anger, but it is not couched in softness. It is presented as fact, which it is.
Reeve's fraught relationship with his disapproving father Franklin is also brought up, revealing the troubled Reeve family and the fears of marriage that plagued Christopher Reeve for decades. A sad moment is when Christopher is at first surprised and thrilled when his father is enthusiastic about his son playing Superman. That mutual joy is short-lived though when both discover that the information was misunderstood. Franklin, an intellectual and poet, thought Christopher was going to be in a film version of George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. The role of the Man of Steel, to Franklin's eyes, was not an academic enough role.
We also learn that Reeve's accident was freakish in more ways than one. If he had fallen a few inches in on direction, it would have been instant death. If he had fallen a few inches in the other, a merely embarrassing fall that he would have walked away from. Other revelations, such as the difficulty and fear he faced when appearing at the Academy Awards or receiving a letter from none other than Katharine Hepburn expressing her shock are surprising.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is informative about the life and times of this actor. Moreover, it is also moving in this profile in courage. The audience that I saw the film with was visibly and audibly sobbing as we learn from his children, former companion Exton and colleagues about what drove Reeve. There are moments of humor, such as when Reeve's off-Broadway costar Jeff Daniels remembers what he thought when Reeve went off to film Superman. Reeve attempted to downplay the significance of his casting. Daniels was having none of it. "I may have been in Dumb and Dumber but I'm not stupid," he quips when recognizing that Reeve's life was going to permanently change, something Reeve either didn't or didn't want to admit.
Co-directors Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui crafted a respectful but not reverential portrait of Christopher Reeve, a driven, flawed, even fearful man who nonetheless rose to the challenge placed before him. Hearing from other of Reeve's costars such as Glenn Close and Susan Sarandon, his family and even from Christopher and Dana Reeve themselves lets us in on the complex, even at times contradictory life of the man behind the myth. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story will move the viewer and give us insight into an actor who played the Man of Steel but who became a greater symbol for truth, justice and the American way.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Views are always welcome, but I would ask that no vulgarity be used. Any posts that contain foul language or are bigoted in any way will not be posted.
Thank you.