“My whole life is backwards,” muses Steve Martin during the second “episode” of Morgan Neville’s Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in Two Pieces.
The point that Martin is making stems not from some Benjamin Button-style anomaly, but from his contention that he has gone from being riddled with anxiety in his 30s to achieving contentment and happiness in his 70s.
While I would posit that this isn’t all that remarkable — “Finding wisdom and peace with age” seems ideal and not unusual — there’s truth to Martin’s bigger point. Biopics and bio-docs tend to have familiar arcs that allow us to reconcile the contradictions of complicated lives; Martin’s biography has no such arc.
Neville’s approach, in the annoyingly titled documentary that I will henceforth only call Steve!, is to bifurcate Martin’s life.
The 98-minute “Then” looks at the origins of Martin’s comic style — a...
The point that Martin is making stems not from some Benjamin Button-style anomaly, but from his contention that he has gone from being riddled with anxiety in his 30s to achieving contentment and happiness in his 70s.
While I would posit that this isn’t all that remarkable — “Finding wisdom and peace with age” seems ideal and not unusual — there’s truth to Martin’s bigger point. Biopics and bio-docs tend to have familiar arcs that allow us to reconcile the contradictions of complicated lives; Martin’s biography has no such arc.
Neville’s approach, in the annoyingly titled documentary that I will henceforth only call Steve!, is to bifurcate Martin’s life.
The 98-minute “Then” looks at the origins of Martin’s comic style — a...
- 3/28/2024
- by Daniel Fienberg
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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