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The documentary “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” traces the life of the Juilliard-trained actor who found megastardom in the 1970s and ’80s playing Superman, and in 1995 as a different kind of hero, after an accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. It features never-before-seen footage of Reeve, who died in 2004 at 52, chronicling his early days; his pivotal friendship with his Juilliard roommate, Robin Williams; and his transformation, in a wheelchair and on a ventilator, into a leading disability and research advocate. Friends like Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg and John Kerry offer their observations; disability rights activists do, too. It’s a thought-provoking tear-jerker.
It also doubles as a family movie, showing Reeve in his role as a father to his three children — Matthew Reeve and Alexandra Reeve Givens from an early relationship that he fled at the height of his fame, and Will Reeve, his son with his wife, Dana Reeve. With unwavering support, she largely gave up her career as a singer and actress to care for her husband. She died of cancer in 2006, just 18 months after him, leaving behind their son, then 13.
The compounded tragedy is leavened by the hope that Reeve embodied, especially with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, which has invested $140 million in the search for a cure for spinal cord paralysis. The film — which arrived in theaters 20 years after Christopher Reeve’s death, almost to the day — chronicles their determination, and doesn’t flinch from the darkest moments, including money worries and the relentlessness of day-to-day caregiving.
The unvarnished approach — and the timing, with Reeve’s children having reached solid footing as adults — led the siblings to agree to the project after years of turning down other offers, said Will Reeve, 32, a correspondent for ABC News and a look-alike to his father. They hoped their home movies and archival material “would provide a deeper meaning and greater texture to his story,” he said, “and remind folks of the fullness of life that one can have, despite whatever catastrophic injury they may suffer, whatever disability they may have.”
In a video interview from London, where they’re based, the filmmakers Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui discussed their rationale for not putting Reeve “on a pedestal,” as Ettedgui described it. “It was really important to show how someone who you might think of as being somehow perfect — the ideal hero — how they experience the same insecurities, the same family issues that the rest of us might,” he said.
Here are some takeaways from the film.
For his father, even Superman didn’t measure up.
Reeve was born in New York into a privileged milieu; after his parents’ divorce, his mother, Barbara Lamb, a journalist, moved with him and his younger brother to Princeton, N.J. His father, F. D. Reeve, was a formidable scholar and poet who was charismatic and athletic — and also aloof and domineering.
“Pretty soon in the research, we had this sense of Chris being haunted by the figure of his father,” Ettedgui said.
In the documentary, Christopher Reeve says, “I thought, I could never do anything to impress him,” and adds, “It was difficult to be myself, or literally breathe easy, when he was around.”
The senior Reeve was briefly excited when his son was cast as Superman — until he realized that Richard Donner’s 1978 film was based on the comic book character and not the 1903 George Bernard Shaw drama “Man and Superman.”
But Reeve was like his father in some ways.
Christopher Reeve was also a multifaceted athlete: “Doing things with my dad, it was all about activity and action,” Matthew Reeve says in the film. “Riding bikes, playing soccer, skiing, swimming, horse riding with my sister.”
“He was an intense guy,” Matthew adds. “You could not fail and quit. It was like you try, you fail, you try harder.”
Reeve had Matthew and his sister, Alexandra, with Gae Exton, a British modeling agent he met while filming “Superman” in London. They never married, and Reeve wasn’t always a reliable parent. The day after Matthew was born, he left to go skiing in France. Eventually he moved back to the United States, to singlehood and stardom. “He abandoned Gae, and he abandoned his two kids at a certain point,” Ettedgui said. (Reeve continued to see his children on school breaks.)
But when he became paralyzed — after falling off a horse in a riding competition — his connection to his family, including his father, changed and deepened, his children and Exton say in the documentary.
Robin Williams was like a brother.
One mainstay: his friendship with Williams. They called themselves brothers and were godfathers to each other’s children. Williams, the comedian and Oscar winner, was one of the first to visit Reeve in the hospital after his accident. He did so in character, as a Russian proctologist; being able to laugh then, Reeve later said, strengthened his will to survive.
Williams, who had Lewy body dementia, died by suicide in 2014. In the film, Close, a friend of both actors, says, “I’ve always felt if Chris was still around, Robin would still be alive.”
That line drew gasps during production, the filmmakers said, and they struggled with whether to include it, fearing it might offend some intimates. But it also showed the depth of the bond between two men who had both known darkness amid great success.
Even the Man of Steel battled insurance.
One surprising thread in the documentary is the Reeve family’s concerns about money. Audiences might imagine that a star of his caliber was set for life. The first “Superman” film earned nearly $1.5 billion in today’s dollars, and he did three sequels. And the Reeves were definitely much more secure than most. But at the time of his accident, Ettedgui said, he was doing TV movies to pay the bills — a breadwinner whose career was in decline. His round-the-clock care at home cost $400,000 annually, with a $1.2 million lifetime insurance cap, as Dana Reeve discovered while he was in rehabilitation.
Williams and his wife at the time, Marsha Williams, stepped in frequently as financial benefactors. Ettedgui said they even had a generator installed, “at huge expense,” in Reeve’s home in Pound Ridge, N.Y., in case the power failed, threatening his ventilator.
And while Reeve continued to make a living — writing books, directing and acting — he also lobbied Congress to raise lifetime insurance caps.
That Oscars speech was hard-won.
Reeve’s emotional appearance at the 1996 Oscars — less than a year after his accident — was a personal and social turning point. He had surpassed medical expectations from the start. Emerging to more than a minute-long standing ovation from a tearful audience, he appeared to bask in the welcome.
The documentary details the arduous months of preparation and logistics it took to get him across the country and onto that stage, at not insignificant risk to his health.
“Oftentimes, in my dad’s wheelchair, if he went over a bump too fast, it could cause his body to spasm,” Will Reeve said. “And he, because he had no control over his own body, would not be able to either stop it or rearrange himself back into his original position. There was a big fear that he would have a spasm or a pop off with the ventilator or some other injury-related issue in the seconds before he was to appear on the stage alone in front of 2 billion people around the world.” (He did have a spasm as he was leaving his dressing room, but aides helped him.)
His speech, introducing a montage of movies about social causes, was also one of the rare instances at the time when a prominent person with a disability was given that kind of platform. It was “a complete game-changing moment,” Bonhôte said.
“He was able to create a memory that has mattered to a lot of people for decades,” Will Reeve said, “but it was also important to him personally to prove to himself that he was capable of getting out in the world — literally something as basic as just doing stuff, traveling and not being confined to his own home for the rest of his life.”
The family has embraced a painful but proud legacy.
Will Reeve was barely 3 when his father was paralyzed. He has watched YouTube clips of his dad on talk shows, and interviews with his parents. “I, over the years, go and revisit those, just to spend a little more time with my folks,” he said. But much of the footage from before the accident — when his father was “in full flight,” as Will put it — was new to him. So seeing the movie “has been a joy and a nostalgic gift,” he said.
His experience of Reeve as a parent was complex. “I didn’t get to know him in the way that he would have wanted me to,” he said, “and I lament that.”
“But what I did get,” he added, “was a fully emotionally and spiritually present father who expressed his love and support and encouragement for me daily.”
“I knew then that he was proud of me,” he said. “My mom told me the same. Nothing went unsaid. They knew how precious that time was.”
Along with his siblings, Will Reeve is involved in the foundation that carries his parents’ names. His experience also gives him a perspective that draws people in.
“For most of my life, people have shared their stories of struggle, and of heartbreak and of tragedy with me,” he said. “Their stories of inspiration and motivation. That came from my parents and their story.”
“And that’s so gratifying,” he added, “because I get to talk about my parents, which brings them into the present with me. They’ve been gone for, like, 20 years. And they still have an effect on people. That matters a lot to me. It’s an honor.”
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