by Jacob Jones When I was approximately 8 years old, I watched Superman: The Movie for the very first time. To my memory, my father had rented it from the local video store at my own request after my having seen the cover art. It was the origin of my experience with superheroes and with superhero movies, as well as one of the first cinematic ventures on which I voluntarily journeyed. Though I was too young then to understand what any of it meant, I – like so many others when the film was first released – saw for the first time that a man could fly through the air without the assistance of wings or other devices for support; he could soar high above the ground, traveling from place to place at lightning speeds, accompanied by an epic musical score (courtesy of maestro John Williams) and a set of dynamic additional superpowers that allowed him to do all sorts of miraculous things. He instantaneously became, and remains to this day, my favorite superhero. I remember distinctly printing out a paper Superman logo, cutting it out with scissors, and taping it to my blue-shirted torso while I wore a bright red velcro cape we had lying downstairs in the toy chest. I would then go to jump on our neighbor’s trampoline and pretend that I, too, could fly. What I was unaware of at this time, and what I wouldn’t come to fully grasp until my late teens/early 20s, was just how much of the hero I so adored was informed by the man who wore that bright red cape with the symbol on his chest, nor how soon the world would lose the man who made us believe that he could fly.
When I was 9, Christopher Reeve passed away due to sepsis, following a long struggle with full-body paralysis after a tragic horse-riding accident fractured his upper spine, leaving him unable to breathe without a respirator or move without assistance. Though many more pieces of Superman media would be produced to varying degrees of success, including 3 more live-action movies, and though I wouldn’t understand the impact of this sentiment until much later in life, to most of the world, their Superman had died. And yet to a much smaller corner of the world, Christoper Reeve the actor, the father, the activist, the human being had passed on. For all the theatrics and celebrations about what it meant for him to be Superman, and for the legacy he left in having carried that mantle, there was still so much more to Reeve than what the silver screen allowed people to know. What Super/Man – which comes to us from directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui – sets out to do is both recognize the superheroic iconography of Reeve as an actor, and celebrate his more human-bound struggles as a man. Much as the Superman character acts as a comic-book stand in for the Christian figure of Jesus (i.e. both God and man), the filmmakers’ aim is to examine the duality of the Super and the Man, ultimately assembling a portrait of a hero in both senses. To those who were aware of Christopher Reeve’s public life outside of his work as Superman, as well as his disability activism following his accident, most of what The Christopher Reeve Story has to offer won’t be especially surprising, nor is the film itself any kind of revolutionary act within the documentary space. There’s no upending of documentary structure, nor rug pulls of information about which the public was previously kept in the dark. It’s largely full of archival footage of Reeve at various stages of his life, interspersed between testimonials of his three children and other working professionals who knew him. In terms of the sheer importance of the documentary to the world stage, and the story it aims to tell, there’s nothing in the film that elevates it above most films like it. But for those to whom Superman means something more personal, and especially to those like myself who were unaware of much of Reeve’s life and work outside of the costume, the portrait painted is a relatively full one, which is buoyed by excellent pacing throughout its two halves. Though both sections of the Christopher Reeve Story are told between flashes to key dates in the timeline of his struggle with paralysis, the first half – which moves at a slightly more rapid pace – is much more concerned with Reeve’s life as a man and an actor as it follows his origins in the theater and coming from a broken home to his screen testing for the Superman part, and on through his eventual falling out with both the role and his longtime partner Gae Exton, with whom he had his first two children. It also chronicles his friendship with former Julliard roommate and comic icon Robin Williams, about whom actor Glenn Close muses “if Chris [Reeve] were still around, maybe he [Robin] would still be alive.” Finally, the upper section essentially ends following Reeve’s partnership and eventual marriage to Dana Morosini, with whom he had his third child, and to whom he stayed married until his passing. (Dana is featured more prominently in the film than just as part of a first-half break – in fact she’s one of the movie’s sort of mainstays throughout – but in terms of structure, their marriage acts as a cut-off point.) The second half of the film more closely follows Reeve’s activism in the disability community, from his controversial ad wherein his search for a cure to full spinal paralysis lead to his walking again, to his advocacy for stem cell research, to his friendships with other people in disabled spaces. This is the half where viewers are able to witness Reeve’s heroism outside of the costume, and though it moves at more of a clip than the first half, and so has a little bit less fun with the story it has to tell, it is the more compelling section of the film, and it’s in this second half where we also learn of Dana Reeve’s tragic passing due to stage four lung cancer so soon after Christopher Reeve’s death. If the film has an emotional low point, it’s when Alexandra Reeve Givens and Matthew Reeve, Christopher’s first son and his daughter, put it quite succinctly that Will Reeve lost his father, grandmother, and mother all within a 24-month timespan. Still, all three children held onto hope and to the legacy of their parents, following in their footsteps at the Christopher and Dana Reeve foundation, continuing to fight for the disability community as both Christopher and Dana did right up to the end. As a sort of counter to the emotional lows of loss that followed the Reeve family, the filmmakers also note that Christopher’s regaining of limited movement in some of his limbs before his passing would go on to inspire others with spinal cord injuries to hold onto hope, eventually resulting in regained mobility. To hear his assistant tell it “people are literally walking because of him.” Whether Super/Man will compete for or is worthy of awards consideration is a subjective topic, but it’s also not the question being asked of viewers who venture out to the theater to see it. The entire goal of The Christopher Reeve Story is laid out plainly in the film’s marketing: “you will believe in a hero.” To some, that may mean being reminded of just how meaningful Reeve was as Superman; to others, it may mean learning about his work as a disabled activist and advocate for change. There are no allusions about Christopher Reeve’s being a perfect man or living an idealistic public life, but the life he did live became an inspiration for many, and whether or not one considers him super or just another man, this film makes no mistake about it: he was, and always will be, a hero. I’m giving “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” an 8.9/10 - The Friendly Film Fan
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