Tuesday, October 15, 2024

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY**** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 6


For my generation, Christopher Reeve is the ultimate superhero - the dreamy, earnest Superman who flew through the skies with Lois Lane. (Sidebar - people think we only got strong female characters now, but I grew up with Princess Leia and Lois Lane, both massively professionally capable and far from blonde Barbies. What a time to be a kid!)  So when Superman was thrown from a horse and paralysed it was shocking and tragic.  He appeared once again at the Oscars making a moving and stirring speech, and then - at least for me - disappeared from view until his death ten years later.  This accomplished new documentary, from directors  Peter Ettedgui (MCQUEEN) and Ian Bonhote, fills in those gaps.

The Christopher Reeve that emerges from this film is an earnest theatre kid who makes it to Juilliard and rooms with his lifelong best friend Robin Williams.  He gets the break to be Superman and off-broadway co-star William Hurt cautions him against it.  Reeve finds international fame but also feels trapped in a certain kind of role, and people's impossible expectations of him as a perfect hero.

In fact he was a complex and flawed man, as we are all flawed. His father did a number on him, raising him in a type of toxic masculinity of hyper-competitiveness and impossible to meet expectations. Reeve was also surrounded by broken marriages and had trouble committing. He met a British woman filming SUPERMAN and had two children with her but didn't marry her and left her to go back to a single life in New York. Five months later he met the woman who would be by his side when the accident happened - Dana - and would actually marry her and have another son.

It's testament to Christopher's family, including his first partner, that they all agree to appear in this film and speak with honesty and vulnerability of what those broken relationships did to them. His elder two children argue that he was more of a present parent after the accident when hyper-competitive athletics were off the table. It's also testament to all three parents that the children seem so close and supportive of each other. I had no idea that the younger son Will lost his mother very soon after losing his father, and his big half-brother really stepped in to provide support. All three were at the London Film Festival screening and it was a privilege to watch this deeply moving film in their presence.

And what of Christopher post-accident?  He launched a foundation and became an activist for scientific research. Some in the disabled community bristled at his search for a cure, and Dana corrected that balance by focussing on care and quality of life. Both seem utterly admirable in their energy and commitment and courage. I was equally moved by the support given by his closest friends, not least Robin Williams. And it utterly broke me when Glenn Close, interviewed extensively here, says she thinks that Robin would still be with us if Christopher had not died.

I would recommend this film to those who loved Superman as children and still feel a thrill when they hear that score. It gives so much depth and insight to the man behind the cape and the extraordinary family who rose to the challenge of his catastrophic accident. I cried, but I was also uplifted. He is still my Superman.

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY has a running time of 106 minutes and is rated PG-13. It was released in the USA last month and will be released in the UK on November 1st.

No comments:

Post a Comment