Of the many double-edged gifts bestowed upon us by the streaming service gods, the welter of celebrity documentaries is perhaps the most remarkable. Where once a notable artist or athlete of a certain age might have participated in an authorized biography or extensive magazine feature, now everyone who’s anyone is happily excavating their personal archives before plunking down in front of a camera crew and encouraging all their besties to do the same.
Michael Jordan, Pamela Anderson, David Beckham, Victoria Beckham, Sylvester Stallone, Steve Martin, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lopez — the list goes on and on and on. Whether an emotional deep dive, cultural criticism or a portrait of the rich and famous lifestyle, each varies in terms of quality and intention, from documentary journalism to obvious vanity project.
Rebecca Miller’s series “Mr. Scorsese,” which premieres on Apple TV Friday, falls squarely in the middle of these two things. Anchored by extensive conversations with the director Martin Scorsese, it is a five-hour, five-part contemplation of an extraordinary career and the myriad forces — personal, cultural, spiritual — that drove, and occasionally threatened to derail, it.
At times, “Mr. Scorsese” feels like a very long, and notably star-studded, bonus features reel, in which the director and longtime friends and collaborators including Thelma Schoonmaker, Robert De Niro, Nicholas Pileggi, Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis discuss the evolution of Scorsese’s work and their admiration of it. But the length, depth and fertility of these relationships show just as much as the participants tell and, honestly, who doesn’t love a good bonus features reel? Especially when it includes delightful footage of Scorsese hanging out with old friends from the ’hood and historic interviews with his parents, especially one in which his mother, Catherine, makes meatballs.
The first episode chronicles his early life on the mean streets of New York’s Lower East Side. As an asthmatic kid, he was forced to view the world through the windows of his family’s apartment — which, he says, explains his love of high-angle shots — and on the screens of the local theaters; as the only air-conditioned buildings to which he had access, they literally saved his life. (“Thank God for the asthma,” Spike Lee jokes.)
Keenly aware of the violence that roiled around him, as well as the local mob figures that ruled the area, Scorsese found solace in the Catholic Church. He briefly considered becoming a priest, but after being kicked out of preparatory seminary, decided that his early attempts at cinematic storytelling — films made first from childish drawings and then with the aid of friends — were a better bet.
Scorsese’s faith, and his battles with it, provide something of a leitmotif of the series — is he a saint or a sinner? Can anyone be one without also being the other? Though at 82, Scorsese presents as an easygoing, wildly engaging éminence grise of cinema, showing up in “The Studio” and making viral TikToks with his youngest daughter, Francesca, he was, in his early career, a wildly ambitious, occasionally violent (breaking phones, hurling desks) and often exhausting collaborator who became a cultural flash point long before he pushed back against Marvel movies.
Stretching from 1967 until the present day, Scorsese’s story provides a timeline of modern American cinema — the rise and fall of independent filmmaking, the historic and now-waning power of critics, the game-changing impact of cinematic violence with “Taxi Driver” and the burgeoning power of the religious right in its reaction to “The Last Temptation of Christ.”
After the early biographical introduction, the series rolls out as a chronological look at some of Scorsese’s most important (although not always successful) films, including and especially “Mean Streets,” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More,” “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “The King of Comedy,” “New York, New York,” “The Age of Innocence,” “Gangs of New York,” “Casino” and “The Departed.”
Scorsese fans will no doubt bemoan what is not covered, especially “Hugo” and all of the director’s TV work, but Miller is far more interested in examining the roots of Scorsese’s genius rather than celebrating its breadth. Behind-the-scenes anecdotes and insights from Scorsese’s longtime collaborators — Schoonmaker, De Niro, Pileggi and, later, DiCaprio — as well as surprising interviews with the aging tough guy who was the inspiration for “Mean Streets’” Johnny Boy and, of course, Mom’s meatball-making scene, more than make up for any gaps in the canon.
More notable, perhaps, are the gaps in the biography. Miller is an actor, novelist and director whose work includes a 2017 documentary about her father, the playwright Arthur Miller; she is also married to Day-Lewis. So the collaborative feel of “Mr. Scorsese,” which often tips toward the deferential, is not surprising. Though Miller does not appear in “Mr. Scorsese,” she is occasionally heard during her interviews with Scorsese, though “interviews” may be too strong a term. Scorsese is clearly more than happy to narrate the story of his career, and though once or twice Miller urges him to expand on this thought or the other, he remains very much in control of a narrative that focuses almost entirely on his work.
Indeed, one of the series’ most powerful moments hits when Domenica Scorsese, his middle daughter, talks about working with her father on “The Age of Innocence,” in which she had a small role. “It was a sense of safety,” she says, “that, um … it was funny to find it there.” She describes her father as a lighthouse. “If he’s working on the film, its right there, he’s on the film. Then if you’re not there in that sphere of light … you can feel its absence.”
All three of Scorsese’s daughters, each products of separate marriages, are part of “Mr. Scorsese,” and while the elder two acknowledge a father who was often absent and occasionally angry, they speak of him only with fondness and respect. No axes were ground in the making of “Mr. Scorsese.”
Nor is Scorsese much interested, as others have been, in using the documentary format as a therapist’s couch. He speaks candidly but briefly about the drug abuse that almost killed him in the 1980s, as well as the anger issues and spiritual questions that have long plagued him, but there is little discussion of his domestic life, which includes five marriages, or the relationships he has with each of his daughters.
Viewers longing to know more about his private life must settle for subtext — former partner Isabella Rossellini mentions that he used to destroy rooms in their home and was shocked when he saw himself after a friend filmed him doing it — and the films.
Miller shows no interest in separating the man from his work because, as “Mr. Scorsese” proves, with this particular man, no separation exists.
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