Producers: Lizzie Gillett, Robert Ford and Ian Bonhôte Directors: Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui Screenplay: Peter Ettedgui, Otto Burnham and Ian Bonhôte Distributor: Warner Bros.
Grade: B
The life of Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Clark Kent and his alter ego Kal-El, aka Superman, in Richard Donner’s fine 1978 blockbuster and Richard Lester’s equally good 1981 sequel (as well as two inferior continuations in 1983 and 1987), is celebrated in this excellent if conventional documentary. The praise is not merely for his acting, in the Superman movies and others he made (with varying degrees of success, it must be admitted) before his death in 2004 at fifty-two, but for the courage and determination he demonstrated after suffering a cervical spinal injury after a fall from a horse during a dressage competition in 1995—an accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down and required a ventilator to allow him to breathe for the last decade of his life.
The cruel irony between the invulnerability of the character he’d so engagingly embodied and the desperate condition from which he now suffered was obvious—and “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” plays on it perhaps too much, with references to kryptonite that might make you cringe a bit. Fortunately, the makers avoid emphasizing the idea of a “Superman curse” that lumps together Reeve’s accident with the suicide years earlier of George Reeves, who played the Man of Steel on television.
And in general the film shows an admirably unsensational touch in covering both Reeve’s life and career through 1995, and the years following the accident. Its treatment of the first period avoids hagiography. One can sympathize with his having to put up with a father who was distant and judgmental—the film repeats the well-known anecdote about how the scholarly Franklin reacted to his son’s getting the part of Superman happily until he was informed it wasn’t in Shaw’s “Man and Superman” but a superhero movie—and admire his work ethic and devotion to high-minded causes.
On the other hand, it’s easy to be taken aback by qualities that come across as self-absorbed and even borderline unfeeling. That description seems to apply to his separation from Gae Exton, with whom he had a decade-long relationship (and two children, Matthew and Alexandra) before he met and wed Dana Morosini, whom he married in 1992 and with whom he had his third child, William. (Exton is among those interviewed.) And it occasionally surfaces in recollections from the children, who recall him often being demanding or absent before the accident.
The film follows the sometimes-rocky years with Exton but concentrates on his closeness with Dana, who steadfastly supported him and collaborated with him in the work that consumed him during the decade of his paralysis, which focused on promoting legislation assisting the disabled and research on spinal cord injuries. This portion of the documentary is inspirational, but doesn’t shy from mentioning the controversy that followed his participation in a commercial that used special effects to depict him rising from a wheelchair and walking again. It also spotlights the importance of Dana Reeves to the foundation they created, which she continued to champion until her untimely death in 2006 and has since been overseen by others committed to the causes it represents.
Another prominent thread in the film is Reeve’s deep friendship with Robin Williams, a classmate at Juilliard in the 1970s with whom he remained close. Williams, the makers note, was instrumental in arranging Reeve’s surprise appearance at the 1996 Oscars, and was consistently supportive in the years following; their relationship was so intense, in fact, that one of the celebrity interviewees, Glenn Close, speculates, rather insensitively one could argue, that had Reeve lived, Williams might not have taken his own life.
Among those who offer their remembrances and insights in interview clips in “Super/Man,” apart from all three of his children and Exton, are his half-brother Kevin Johnson, Reeve’s assistant Laurie Hawkins, and friends such as Close, Jeff Daniels, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon and John Kerry. There are also remembrances from some involved in the making of “Superman” (producer Pierre Spengler and, in archival footage, director Richard Donner), as well as specialists involved in Reeve’s medical treatment and associates in his philanthropic work. Archival footage of Williams is also included, along with other found footage and clips from Reeve’s films.
Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui have worked with their co-writer Otto Burnham, who also edited, to assemble the material, old and new (shot by Brett Wiley) confidently, with the chronological shifts smoothly differentiated and without overdoing the occasional imaginative transitional insert.
The result is an affecting tribute to Reeve, an uplifting portrait of a man who responded to personal tragedy not with bitterness but a desire to serve as a symbol of hope to others.