By his own description, actor, disability activist and perennial Superman Christopher Reeve was “a very good horseman.” In 1995, thrown from his horse during a competition, Reeve suffered a paralyzing spinal cord injury. The irony was cruel and too casually repeated around the world: the man of steel, lying almost motionless, unable to breathe without a tube.
What Reeve did in his years after his injury was remarkable and, yes, inspiring. Metaphorically, he rose to the occasion of an extremely difficult situation, advocating for funding of disability research on a large scale and achieving a degree of movement recovery that few believed possible. All of this is covered well in the stylish but truly moving new documentary “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.”
The film also reveals how Reeve, launched into a peculiar, typecast kind of stardom in his twenties with the release of “Superman” in 1978, endured a childhood marked by an impossible-to-please father; his parents’ divorce when Reeve was three; his parents’ subsequent remarriages and divorces; and the young aspiring actor’s ping-pong upbringing “between two families and neither seemed really safe,” as Reeve describes at one point in the documentary’s archival footage.
Arriving in New York after studying at Cornell University, Reeve progressed to Juilliard, where he made a crucial lifelong friend in classmate Robin Williams. Reeve auditioned for “Superman” in 1977 while performing on Broadway with Jeff Daniels (interviewed in “Super/Man”) and William Hurt. His friend Daniels supported him; Hurt called him a sellout before Reeve even got the role.
Made with the full cooperation of Reeve’s family, “Super/Man” avoids many of the limitations and image management initiatives that usually characterize these types of documentaries. The complications of Reeve’s adult romantic and parental life repeated many of the troubling dynamics of his own turbulent childhood. Fame, thanks to “Superman,” led to more opportunities, but also to frustrating Hollywood casting and surprisingly lean years. He never really had the career he wanted without the cape.
His competitive spirit and dedication to many activities, from flying and sailing to horses and skiing, kept Reeve in near perpetual motion until 1995. At the time of the accident, he had a son and a daughter from a 10 year relationship. with British modeling agent Gae Exton (they met in the dining room of Pinewood Studios in London). Then, during Reeve’s marriage to actress and singer Dana Morosini, he had a third son. In the documentary directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui (“McQueen”), Reeve and others talk in various interviews over the years about how the actor learned to commit to his most important relationships.
As he says at one point, with disarming frankness: “I needed to break my neck to learn some of these things. »
The film’s new interview sequences with Reeve’s children, friends and colleagues create a mosaic of a dense, interrupted life and another life, encountered not easily but valiantly. The film’s central visual idea imagines Reeve’s Superman, cast in concrete, floating in space, laced with digital effects depictions of what the spinal cord injury has done to his body. Does the film need it? Maybe, maybe not. Or maybe just less. The same goes for the musical score, which rarely goes silent. Such is the emotional impact of the film that waves of sonic sensation tend to overwhelm our responses to Reeve’s story.
Later scenes include Reeve’s return to the Oscars in 1996, and then the public and private triumphs and setbacks he and his family experienced until his death in 2004 at age 52. Then, heartbreakingly, his wife Dana Reeve died two years later of lung cancer. Their children, now adults, continue their work with the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. “Super/Man” should introduce many people, young and old, to the work of a fine actor and, more importantly, to what Reeve accomplished for himself and so many others in life that was entrusted to him.
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” – 3 stars (out of 4)
MPA Rating: PG-13 (for some strong linguistic and thematic elements)
Duration: 1:44
How to watch: Premieres October 11
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
