documentary reveals the real man of steel

There is a scene in the 1980 film Superman II, cut from the original theatrical release but reinstated for director Richard Donner’s “cut” decades later, in which Superman’s father Jor-El (Marlon Brando) speaks of a Kryptonian prophecy: “The son becomes the father, the father becomes the son.”

Brando’s heart-wrenching dialogue speaks of sacrifice, unconditional love, remembrance, connection and the deepest loss. In the scene, tears stream from actor Christopher Reeve’s face as the disempowered Clark Kent realises he must surrender everything to be reborn as Superman.

Revisiting that scene, it is hard not to weave it into the wider arc of Reeve’s own life: a troubled relationship with his father, writer and poet Franklin D’Olier Reeve; his devotion as a dad to Matthew, Alexandra and Will; and the inescapable echo of his cinematic alter-ego, Superman, which remained in his later life a complex mirror to his catastrophic spinal injury.

All of those strands come together in an illuminating and deeply affecting documentary, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, the producer/directors of McQueen, the 2018 documentary about the life of British fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

It is, at first glance, simply the story of Reeve’s life. But as the strands are woven, a more complex image forms, about humanity, our perception of superior ability and disability, about love and legacy, and, inevitably, about how sons become their fathers, and sometimes, fathers become their sons.

The enduring power of cinema means that despite its relative antiquity in the modern superhero canon, few people do not know Christopher Reeve’s Superman, brought to life in four films produced between 1978 and 1987, and set to a majestic acoustic soundscape written by acclaimed Star Wars composer John Williams.

In 1995, Reeve – an accomplished equestrian – was involved in a riding accident that destroyed his first and second cervical vertebrae. Until his death in 2004, he was paralysed from the neck down, confined to a wheelchair and unable to breathe without a ventilator.

“Because we all were born after he became famous, [his fame] was kind of always there,” son Matthew says. “There wasn’t a watershed moment where it all changed and shifted. I think the nature of his fame changed after the accident. But in terms of that, I mean, he was always just dad, albeit an extremely cool one.”

In the two decades since their father passed away, the family has fielded many inquiries from filmmakers with a documentary in mind. “It’s more fortuitous timing than anything else,” son Will says. “We heard the director’s vision, what they wanted this to mean, and it aligned exactly with what we hoped any project about our father’s story would be. So we said, let’s do it.”

Will describes Super/Man as a “holistic, comprehensive, unflinching 360-degree view of a human life and of a human family and everything that we have experienced and endured and the triumphs and tragedies and everything in between.”

Critically, in an era where many documentaries are produced by stakeholders loyal to a legacy, the family imposed no conditions on Bonhôte and Ettedgui. The directors were free to explore all the nuanced layers of Reeve’s life, including his difficult relationship with his father, and his frustrations with his injury and disability.

“We didn’t put our thumb on the scale at any point; the first time we saw it was close to a final cut,” Will says.

The documentary blends the family’s home movies with archival film footage, interviews with Reeve before and after his accident, footage from an unproduced documentary Matthew had worked on, and adds narration from Reeve’s recording of the audiobook of his autobiography, Still Me.

“That was powerful, just to hear his own story and how self-reflective he was and how honest he was in his own voice,” daughter Alexandra says. “It’s so many different overlapping threads of our family that they’ve managed to pull together in this beautiful way, and find themes that we probably weren’t even aware of ourselves.”

The documentary also taps into the complex intersection of Reeve and the adjacent – and enduring – images of him as an infinitely strong, undefeatable man of steel. Of ability and disability, and what that means. “You haven’t died. It’s just a different life,” Bonhôte says. “His superpower was probably his family and how people just allowed him to be and to push himself.”

Ettedgui adds: “It’s an extraordinary trajectory. You go from thoughts of suicide and despair to discovering a new reason to live, in the laughter that [close friend] Robin Williams provokes, in [wife] Dana [Morosini] and the kids’ love for him. To then discover a new purpose for your life.

“Even though you’ve lost all your superpowers, you still have the heart and the voice of Superman, and the intelligence,” Ettedgui says. “Then creating the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation [which supports research into spinal cord injuries], and doing battle with politicians, galvanising the scientists and doctors. It’s an extraordinary story. We were both so inspired by that story, and how he [met head-on] this unimaginable adversity.”

In the end, away from the cultural iconography of Superman, and in its most intimate moments, Super/Man is also just the story of a man and his family. And the documentary leans deeply into the difficult emotions around his loss and his legacy. If you are inclined easily to tears, the last third of Super/Man is tough.

“A mantra I live by is grief is permanent, but healing is possible,” Will says. “We will always be grieving our losses, but we can keep the spirit and memory [of loved ones] with us. And one way we can do that is by talking about them. And that can help bring healing because we get stronger in the broken places.”

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The most difficult part for Matthew was hearing his siblings talk about their experiences. “I know my story. I know my feelings,” he says. “Talking to the filmmakers, doing the interview, was a cathartic experience. But hearing their experiences, after re-watching this a few times, [they are] still the moments that hit the hardest.”

The process of grieving also revealed the wider tapestry of human loss, Alexandra adds. “You hear from people who say, I’ve lost someone too. And you realise you’re part of a [wider] human experience.

“It’s a beautiful thing, to be able to look on that, on the entirety of a life well lived, to visit that grief, to know it’s still there, and that it comes from love, and then still focus on the future,” Alexandra says. “We were raised to live our lives that way. And this film encapsulates those values.”

The Reeve family want the documentary to be a “generational, historical document,” Will says. “For the world, hopefully, but certainly for our own family so that we can keep my dad’s and my mom’s spirits alive. Part of doing that is going to those places and knowing that, while grief is permanent, you can find healing by going there.”

Super/Man is in cinemas from October 10. For more information on the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, see christopherreeve.org.