Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (2024)
For a lot of people, me included, Christopher Reeve will always be Superman. It doesn’t matter who else has played the part since or how well. Something about those other performances will always hearken back to Reeve, whether it’s the way the actors carry themselves or the hairstyle with the trademark curl on the forehead.
Reeve is the Bela Lugosi of the Superman universe in that in so many ways he’s created what we think of as Superman. Also like Lugosi, Reeve tried to shake off the very deep typecasting he experienced as Superman only to admit in the end that he and the character were inextricably linked. The new and mostly excellent documentary, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, delves into when Superman became real in a whole new and tragic way.
The film mostly focuses on Reeve’s life and work since his 1995 accident, in which he fell off a horse and broke his neck, and is made up of archival footage from Reeve himself as well as his late wife Dana, and new interviews with his three children and numerous family and friends. Some of my favorite parts revolve around Reeve and his college roommate, Robin Williams, who were close friends from their time at Julliard until Reeve’s death in 2004.
While Reeve’s early life and filmography are briefly mentioned, Super/Man spends most of its time talking about the Superman franchise. Believe it or not, there were people who told Reeve that playing Superman would ruin his career.
Another big chunk of the film’s running time is devoted to Reeve’s time away from the camera. Reeve was a hugely active sportsman before his accident, which is one of the things that makes it all the more tragic, and there’s plenty of footage of him playing soccer with his family, or sailing, or horseback riding. It must have felt like home to him to have these times with his loved ones, as he was the product of a broken home and didn’t have a great relationship with his dad, author, writer, academic and translator Franklin Reeve.
We also see intense vulnerability on the part of the family, who approach their interviews very candidly. It was widely acknowledged im 1995 that Reeve might not make it, and for a time the family briefly considered allowing him to go off life support. However, it was Dana’s words that put a stop to that. She told Reeve, “You’re still you, and I love you.”
That brought Reeve back to life. From then on, quadraplegia was something to be overcome.
Thankfully, Super/Man doesn’t resort to the cheesy animation that’s unfortunately all too common in documentaries nowadays (looking at you, Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story). Instead, we see a floating stone likeness of Reeve, presumably as Superman, only without the cape and the “S” emblem. While it appears strong and untouchable, cracks appear at various places on the body. However, it never breaks or falls from the sky. More often than not, precious stones grow out of the cracks.
Super/Man all moves very gracefully, and while not terribly groundbreaking as far as the documentary genre is concerned, it’s extremely well-crafted and easy to follow. It brought back a lot of memories; I was about to graduate from high school when Reeve had his accident and we talked about it in class, all of us feeling as if the Reeve we knew was gone forever. It was a sad and unsettling feeling. None of us could have predicted what would happen next.
The only issue I have is that the film continually acts as if Reeve was the first to draw attention to the needs of disabled people and made disabled people visible. This certainly isn’t true.
While Reeve accomplished a great deal in that regard and is certainly very high-profile, another quadraplegic has preceded him by quite a lot: Joni Eareckson Tada, who at seventy-five is the longest-living quadraplegic on record and among her many accomplishments she was instrumental in the development and adoption of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Other highly visible disabled people are Helen Keller and Louis Braille, whose influence on society resonate to this day. People like them have laid the groundwork for what Reeve has done, and while this doesn’t take away from Reeve’s accomplishments, acting as if Reeve was first is like acting as if Charles Lindbergh invented the airplane.
Again, though, this doesn’t diminish Super/Man as a whole in the slightest. I came away feeling inspired, missing Reeve, and remembering all over again why he and the character he helped create were so compelling. Reeve may have wanted to shake off Superman, but Superman was destined to become more of an emblem for his life than Reeve could have ever predicted.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: A-
Principal Cast: Christopher Reeve, Johnny Carson, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Glenn Close, Richard Donner, Alexandra Reeve Givens, John Houseman, Barack Obama, Dana Reeve, Matthew Reeve, Will Reeve, Susan Sarandon, Jane Seymour, Robin Williams
Directed by Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui.
Written by Ian Bonhote, Otto Burnham, and Peter Ettedgui.