by David Hoffman
(Washington DC based freelance journalist and arts and entertainment reviewer)
(The Hollywood Times) 2/7/25- Oh, it’s a moving picture all right. A riveting astonishing moving picture.
It premiered Saturday on CNN, following an earlier run on HBO and before those screenings at movie theaters nationwide beginning in late 2024. Already a BAFTA nominee it’s highly likely to win Oscar nom status to compete for Best Feature Length Documentary Film for the golden statuette.
From its eye-catching, kinetic and deftly edited cinematic opening through to its poignant dying fall, at its telltale tragic denouement, it will captivate growing audiences drawn to its tale of the rise of an iconic movie star and literally his tragic fall, and finally its inevitable sad yet inspiring aftermath.
It begins of course with a sudden devastating fall from horseback in Virginia in May 1995.
It begins when Superman fell to earth, in a shocking and freak catastrophic accident during an equestrian competition. A bewildering moment when everything changed for Superman aka Christopher Reeve.
Rendered immediately quadriplegic, paralyzed from a devastating upper spinal cord injury, Reeve, who once flew high like Icarus near the sun only to plummet to earth, was now at death’s doorway. Faux- ironic, one reviewer has written. A caprice hovering between life and death, Reeve was literally riding the day of the accident a horse nicknamed Buck. Buck.
This is a film sent as a love letter to Reeve as their dad from his three children but directed and written by Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui and edited brilliantly by Otto Burnham. It’s almost Grecian in its formula of pride and then paying the piper for easily conferred success. Except in fact Reeve himself never took his good fortune for granted at all. He was within the human framework actually a truly noble man flecked with imperfection like everyone is, simply less so.
His career big break came of course when he was cast as an unknown actor in the Ricard Donner 1978 megahit eponymous film about the one and only Superman, the impossibly handsome and likable caped crusader (with the bumbling Clark Kent alter ego), the iconic Man of Steel famously able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, yet finally a broken man of grievously injured flesh and blood. Yet at the same time of nearly indomitable grit to will himself to recover from the fall. Of course, after the fall though he mightily persevered, Reeve could simply never regain much physically. But that aside, alas, his story concludes as nevertheless a tale of truly luminous and indeed liminal triumph.
What to say about his tragic fall, as scrupulously documented in this remarkably exacting story presented in a nonlinear narrative that alternates between the before and the after his accident, is simply this. Stupidly, absurdly even, it happened. Watch the film. It tells you all we can ever know, if not understand, much less accept, the specific mechanics of how it happened. Camus was correct. As in the myth of Sysiphus, who also understood so well, life is purely and absurdly absurd.
When Reeve died in 2004, he suddenly fell into a coma from severe infection and was hospitalized and died at the age of 52. His wife the singer Dana Morosini then took over sole running of the Christopher Reeve Foundation while also continuing her passion for singing. Later diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer she died in 2006 at the age of 44 leaving their youngest son Will, the spitting image of his father, an orphan at only 13 years old.
The foundation continues today, now named for each of them, with a solid record of achievements and several real breakthroughs and medical milestones in paralysis research. And the work goes on!
Finally, there’s a real Hollywood angle to the story as recounted effectively by the editor, screenwriters and directors. Among the actors interviewed are specially Susan Sarandon and Glenn close and also Whoopi Goldberg and Jeff Daniels who all were Reeve’s friends. And another friend also, John Kerry who like Reeve himself is a strong supporter of using stem cell cultures in spinal cord research. But most of all there stands tall the one in a million actor and Reeve’s close friend the legendary Robin Williams from their student days together at Julliard in the late 1970s.
Indeed, it was Robin Williams who first made Reeve laugh out loud at the hospital for the first time since the accident, and also purchased a large van Reeve could travel in including at his appearance at the 68th Academy Awards where he received a standing ovation.
The film is simply outstanding and should become the gold standard to present in documentary film classes henceforth.
Distributed by Warner Brothers, DC Studios, HBO and CNN, it’s on its roll now towards further awards plaudits winning 98% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and audiences polled on CinemaScore have rated it a rare A+.
Finally, just this. Yes, you will surely cry. Bring plenty of tissues. But you will also exult. It’s that kind of film. It can even maybe shine an incandescent new and bright light on what it means to be human.