If documentary money comes in when it gets too honest and people start gossiping, director RJ Cutler was in trouble when he started working on his Martha Stewart documentary, “Martha.” That’s because it doesn’t show much inclination for honesty and personality, let alone emotion.
Things are also tough for Cutler, the director of The October Issue and The War Room , who will also be at the festival this fall with Elton John: Never Too Late . The director is trying to make a film about the rise, survival, and redemption of an iconic American lifestyle specialist, more so than that the icon is about the accommodation and redemption parts of that entanglement. Time and again, Stewart is silent or timid when she touches on sensitive matters; I have a feeling she pleases her cameraman with a little more restraint than he might show a kitchen assistant using the wrong tool to slice an orange.
But he insists on the aesthetic of the Netflix-produced film, which will have its world premiere Saturday at the Telluride Film Festival with Stewart in tow. “Martha” comes across as a kind of homage montage meant to prove its subject worthy of a biographical doc, but the praise doesn’t take long (“If I have an original influence, it’s Martha”… “She is the criou, or the world we live in”) and is used more to cite phrases like Porn donuts from home e suggests that Stewart “bought the ideal of perfection—at what price?”
But before Martha explores or discovers, he traces the rise of the Stuart empire with rapid efficiency. Alternating on-camera interviews with Martha, interspersed with narrative commentary from a series of friends, family, and experts—all conveyed visually with the usual assortment of old photographs, archival images, and occasional illustrations by Jay Shield—she reveals the history of a young man whose father was a lifelong perfectionist, had six children, no money, and ate every day with a big cup of coffee and red wine.
She became a successful model at 15 and came home for the first time asleep (“He was so aggressive and happy”). But when she told him they were getting married, he put a veil over her face and said, “No, you’re not getting married with that face.” “Ele é judeu.”
She married him herself and had a child, because that’s what everyone else did, only to discover that motherhood didn’t come naturally to her. Then she went to work on Wall Street, bought a run-down old house on Turkey Hill Road in Westport, Connecticut, moved into her new home, and found a new career as a media and lifestyle guru. “If we hadn’t gone to Turkey Hill Road, Martha Stewart wouldn’t be here,” she says.
Marriages don't last, because the husband, she says, is broken, or becomes a “piece of shit.” Inflexible about her zero-tolerance policy for cheating husbands, she admitted, when questioned, to having an affair with a “very attractive Irishman” and then repeated: “I was nothing. He was nothing“
This becomes a recurring theme in “Martha”: Stewart shrugs off his transgressions but criticizes others when they don’t live up to his idea of perfection. She gives Cutler access to letters she wrote to her husband when their marriage was ending, but she refuses to lie about it. “I’ve handed over letters that were very personal,” she says, leaning back in her chair and refusing to go into detail. “It starts today.”
The story is interesting enough for Stewart to tell behind the two walls he built: a wildly successful publishing empire, a growing reputation for being tough on his subordinates—and the moment he may have been given an unwarranted warning that ImClone would only sell a handful before its value became apparent. The standout moment wasn’t when she went to court after being charged with obstruction of justice, but when she appeared on “CBS This Morning” for a cooking segment and bristled at host Jane Clayson’s repeated questions about the case. “I want to focus on the salt enamel,” she said.
The film devotes a great deal of time to the lawsuit—and to Stewart's claim that she did nothing wrong, failed to disclose details of the conversation with her reporter, and was the victim of selective prosecution (for lying rather than misusing confidential information) because she was a hit with a group of reporters and publicists who refer to her in the film as a “hypocritical tower of idiots.”
It is difficult to attend this section of the film without two opinions: but it has undergone a selection process, and yet the stock has been eliminated after receiving information that should not have been available. This does not mean that she should have been imprisoned for five months – “My situation here is unfortunate and everyone seems to know it”, escriveu ela em su diário na prisão – but it does not fully justify pathetic phrases like “those” that the promoters have to say “He was put in Cuisinart and is no longer associated.”
On the other hand, Stewart's ability to make evil friends helped him give his life and career a third chance, which provides the most entertaining part of “Martha”. After a while, she gets a contract to host a show for “The Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett, but she hates the show; Oh, the courage of Martha Stewart Omnimedia despencou; her love of 15 years, billionaire Charles Simone, tells her that he is marrying someone else, and his country does not want to quarrel with Stewart again.
Then, in 2015, she agreed to star in Justin Bieber's Comedy Central show, where her fierce criticism brought her home and paved the way for a career with her new friend Snoop Dogg and shows like “Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party.”
It’s a kind of silly, bad-ass comeback, and it gives “Martha” the kind of conclusion you never would have expected if we hadn’t been able to unravel the past decade. This is Martha Stewart, a cunning trader who’s figured out how to take the hits and come out on top—the final episode of the film is filled with conversations about how Martha has calmed down, how she’s not the perfectionist she usually is, and how she’s learning to adapt and change.
Cutler then turns to the camera for Stewart, still ignoring the questioning and dating lines a bit, as she laughs and says, “And the flaws are just a little… Well, what happens when this is the new era?”
It's your voice, Marta. It's what you want.
Martha will be released on Netflix.
