Salinger (2013) [Netflix (HD)]
Documentary

Tagline: Uncover the mystery but don't spoil the secrets!

This documentary includes interviews with 150 subjects, including J.D. Salinger's friends and colleagues - who have never spoken on the record before - as well as previously unseen film footage, photographs and other material. Additionally, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, John Cusack, Danny DeVito, John Guare, Martin Sheen, David Milch, Robert Towne, Tom Wolfe, E.L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal and Pulitzer Prize winners A. Scott Berg and Elizabeth Frank talk about Salinger's influence on their lives, their work and the broader culture. The film is the first work to get beyond the "Catcher in the Rye" and the author's meticulously built up wall to explore his childhood, painstaking work methods, marriages, private world and the secrets he left behind after his death in 2010.

Storyline: An unprecedented look inside the private world of J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye.

User Comment: John DeSando (jdesando@columbus.rr.com) from Columbus, Ohio • 1 October 2013

". . . I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all." Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye

No writer in the 20th century cultivated such an obsessive privacy as J. D. Salinger. As famed as his Catcher in the Rye was, he was equally jealous of his privacy. Shane Salerno's documentary "Salinger" does a modest job highlighting his almost hermit life in New England. However, the above quote reveals as much as any documentary could hope to do the innocence and privacy of Salinger's iconic character and maybe himself.

Otherwise, this doc is occasionally and unintentionally hilarious when it uses the same still photos of Salinger over and over for want of an extant variety. A few of the talking heads are actors who may have no real cred to talk about the author (Martin Sheen, Phillip Seymour Hoffman); at other times the real deals like author and friend A.E. Hotchner and noted writer Gore Vidal comment with insight.

The women such as Joyce Maynard, who lived with him, and his daughter Margaret provide the best insight into his emotional and physical isolation. Beyond these first-hand recollections, it's hard for director Shane Salerno to shake anything new from the Salinger tree of life. The Internet holds the same information.

Then there's the heavy-handed music, most amusingly prominent in the final sequence that reveals what the Internet already has disclosed: Salinger, who died in 2010 at 91, authorized several original works to be released between 2015 and 2020. This information is about the only new material in the documentary.

In the end, Salinger himself is in charge. Most of the commentary is broad and speculative, lacking the inside information the world clamors for. He is as rebellious and disdainful of phoniness as Holden Caulfield. Actually, he probably is Caulfield--I fit right in with the other clueless commentators.

J.D. Salinger remains an enigma and a powerful one at that: "If three people used something I wrote in this fashion, I'd be very troubled by it." Playwright John Guare on crimes by Catcher in the Rye devotees.

Summary: The great writer remains a mystery.

[CSW] -2.6- This film reminds me of Salinger's most famous book. His life seems fascinating on the surface: the one-hit wonder dynamo of a writer who became a recluse. Unfortunately, dig beneath the surface, and you find a painfully unremarkable biography. Likewise, read the great classic by the man and you'll get nothing but the adolescent whining of an annoying, self-important teenager with whom, if you identify with makes for a great novel but if not then you will never get the point of the story. In general the movie is painful to watch as it spent much of the time dealing with the external demons and obsession and fantasies that made the man, but not the internal motivation of why. If you were enamored with the novel this will only give you the barest glimpse of the man himself and almost nothing of his true motivations. For me it was like trying to understand PTSD. I can do it on a surface level but since each individual experiences PTS differently there is no way to understand it in depth. I was hoping for a lot more and came away feeling like I not only didn't get the answers I was seeking but had also sent way too much time not getting them.
Netflix Streaming (HD) - No D-Box.


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