Inside Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
Eleven days after Christopher Reeve shattered his top two vertebrae in a horseback riding accident that nearly killed him, Dana Reeve threw a party for their son.
The timing was terrible. But a beloved little boy was turning three – and a celebration was in order.
The party took place in a small lounge in the intensive care unit, filmed by a friend to share later at Christopher’s bedside. There is cake and a clown and Will Reeve, joyfully zipping back and forth among a sea of adults squeezed onto hospital couches.
Midway through the makeshift festivities, the camera lingers briefly on Matthew Reeve and Alexandra Reeve. They are 15 and 11 years old, and in between the bright smiles they beam toward their brother, their faces grow taut, their bodies still. Since the accident, they'd watched their father fight off pneumonia and survive a risky surgery to reattach his skull to his spine. They'd reached for his hand past a tangle of tubes connecting him to a ventilator keeping him alive. They understood that they might lose him.
But on this day, for this little boy, they keep their pain in check. The scene is as wrenching as it is beautiful, a glimpse of a family working hard to hold each other up.
The deeply private moment is one of many threaded throughout “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” a new film that not only pays tribute to Reeve’s extraordinary life, but the love that surrounded him.
Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui use a trove of never-before-seen home movies and archival materials shared for the first time by the Reeve children to depict a decidedly complicated man. Scenes zigzag back and forth across the whole of Christopher’s life, exploring everything from his difficult relationship with his father and the intense stardom that came with “Superman” to the despair that gripped him in the days after the accident. Narrated in large part by Reeve himself with the recorded audio from his autobiography, “Still Me,” the overall effect is not only intimate, but propulsive.
“Alexandra, Will, and I laid down this challenge in our very first conversation to not make it a film of two halves, a ‘before and after’ the accident,” Matthew says. “Our father’s story was much more interesting than that. And Ian and Peter found the emotional and thematic tissue that connects either side of his accident, and they cross that bridge and go back and forth really elegantly. It’s brilliant.”
The film, arriving 20 years after Christopher’s death, challenges its audience to better understand the complex ambitions that shaped him, not only in his work as an actor, but as an athlete and advocate and father. Here, Christopher’s triumphs and struggles – including his absence from Matthew and Alexandra’s early life, his frustrations with the movie that defined him, and his at-times blinkered drive to transform spinal cord injury research – are given equal weight. And that, says Matthew, is the point.
“We wanted whoever made this to create a 360-degree portrait of a human who was incredible and flawed, who was heroic and brave, who had fears and worries,” he says.
To that end, the Reeves not only shared their family archives with the filmmakers, they ceded control of the narrative and sat for deeply personal interviews.
“We knew if we wanted it to be good, and for the audience to respond to it, we had to share it all,” Matthew says. “We had to share ourselves and say the things we hadn't said publicly. We had to tell the stories that were just ours.”
Some of the resulting moments in the film – from Will describing how he learned of his mother’s death to Matthew talking about the last time he saw Christopher on his feet – are steeped in sadness. But others, including Will’s birthday party at the hospital, conjure a family’s determination to not cede their lives to despair.
“It was a terrifying time, and we knew what was at stake,” Alexandra says. “But at the same time, we saw what it was to try and create joy, to be together as a family. And I think that will resonate for a lot of people.”
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While “Super/Man” centers on Christopher’s story, its heart lies with Dana, whose steady presence as a mother, wife and caregiver holding the family together is quietly felt in frame after frame. For Will, the film’s recognition of his mother’s impact – not only for her role within the family, but for founding the National Paralysis Resource Center in 2002 – is as critical as its tribute to his father.
“You can't tell the full story of Christopher Reeve without telling the story of Dana Reeve,” he says. “My mom was a singular force in the world. She was thrust into this unfamiliar, terrifying situation as a young woman with a young child, and all of her hopes and dreams for the future changed in an instant. But instead of retreating, she not only took care of me and our dad and our family but realized she had a platform to help other people in similar situations. With the NPRC, she took what she knew and had learned, and the resources she had, and she deployed them in a meaningful way that has impacted untold numbers of lives.”
Will is proud of the way the film portrays both of his parents, and especially with the attention it pays to the past and present advocacy work of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. To date, the Reeve Foundation has raised approximately $145 million for spinal cord injury research; the National Paralysis Resource Center has helped more than 130,850 people living with paralysis and distributed over $44 million in Quality of Life Grants throughout the U.S.
“The Reeve Foundation is a central element of my parents’ legacy,” Will says. “My siblings and I were intent on showing the good work that the Foundation did during my parents’ lifetimes, has done since their deaths, and will continue to do as far into the future as it needs to exist.”
That, too, was the point of sharing their family’s story: from the birthday party in the ICU lounge and the late-night moments spent with their dad drinking coffee to their efforts to help other families living with paralysis, Christopher and Dana were determined to make the best of the hand they were dealt.
“Many of the themes in this film are universal,” Alexandra says, adding, “Our family demonstrated by example that you don't sit and dwell. You try and find those moments of light, even in the darkness.”
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” is screening in theaters across the country on September 21 and September 25 via Fathom Events. Read more about it on the Reeve Foundation website at ChristopherReeve.org/superman