When I wanted to see RJ Cutler’s new documentary, Marta, To be honest, I wasn’t really focusing on it other than just another screening I had, and it being all about Martha Stewart. So I expected it to be mostly gardening, cooking and setting the perfect festive table.
Boy, was I ever wrong, thank goodness, because this is simply a compelling, candid and surprisingly warts-and-all look at the life and times of Stewart, someone who was very much in the public eye for much of her career interest, but until now the image and the person behind what we thought we knew about her.
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Me probably shouldn’t are surprised, because Cutler is a filmmaker who generally digs deep and manages to present portraits of his subjects that have not been seen before. His documentary on Anna Wintour, Billie Eilish and John Belushi is proof of this, and his innovative and sensational take on Marlon Brando, based on a wealth of never-before-heard cassette tapes, Listen to me, Marlon, was also a knockout. He is a busy man who is also responsible for the current Elton John: Never too late this season.
But it’s what he can pick up from Stewart, who became a willing interviewee and guide to her own life in many sessions sitting down with Cutler for this film at which he, as always, demanded and received. final cut. She also gave him extensive access to her own archives, including numerous film footage, photographs, diaries, letters to and from her ex-husband and prison diaries, as well as never-before-seen photographs of her time behind bars on insider trading charges. . As I sat – alone – in a Netflix screening room in Hollywood watching this two-hour journey through the life of Martha Stewart, I was stunned and at a few moments even audibly talked to the screen.
Nothing was off limits, and as you would imagine, Stewart would be a great dinner party guest to sit next to and a great storyteller. Marta takes an intimate look at who she is, how she got there, how she fell, how she got back up and everything in between. Stewart has written more than 100 books with her signature advice on all things home-related – both inside and out – served accessibly on a silver platter to an adoring readership. There are also her Emmy-winning TV shows, seven different magazines (Martha Stewart Living) and a company that made her the first self-made female billionaire in 1999. For example, her inventory alone accounted for $1.5. billion in 2002 all Kmart’s gross is $36 million then.
Cutler covers this in linear style, but if you thought you knew Martha Stewart, think again. This is a complicated portrait of a complicated personality, but one that we come to understand in ways I never thought possible or thought about in the first place.
Particularly fascinating are the first parts with young Martha, who did not come from money as I had assumed, but had a father who, as a traveling salesman, was no easy task for his daughter. Yet he was the one who introduced her to gardening and making food from the land. He couldn’t imagine where That would lead. Later in her teens she became a successful model. She did that just to support the family and later became hugely successful as a Wall Street broker for eight years.
It’s also fun to see her blend in with the celebrity we would come to know as she navigates major companies like Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch. Launching her own magazine and creating an empire like no other is discussed in detail, but delving into a marriage to a cheating man, sharing the most intimate letters begging him to stay, choosing to… saying what she wanted to know and releasing Cutler. Visualizing those letters is something that isn’t easy for every curious filmmaker. Of course, there was also the stock scandal that caused James Comey and the US Attorney’s Office to go after her in a high-profile manner, sending her to prison and essentially bankrupting her company. Stewart talks about it in vivid Martha-esque terms (“those prosecutors should have been put in a Cuisinart and put on edge”), and Cutler doesn’t hesitate to describe it all in detail, quite moving once she’s behind bars .
Also equally fascinating about it Marta, In this way it shows her resilience against all odds. Her “comeback” is nothing short of remarkable, including a Sports illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover at 81, that got 100 billion impressions and most notably in an off-the-wall appearance on Comedy Central’s roast Justin Bieber, no less. She steals the show with a very funny routine and sits next to Snoop Dogg at the taping, an introduction that led to their own professional duowhich shows that life can provide strange detours and new beginnings.
Martha Stewart, the “original influencer,” continues to reinvent the brand and do it on her own terms. Cutler shows us the man and makes us care. She expresses her philosophy: “I have two mottos. One of them is: learn something new every day. And the second is: when you’re done changing, you’re done. Change that garden if you don’t like it. Take it out and you start all over again.”
When I met Stewart very briefly at the Telluride Film Festival, where this documentary premiered last month, I mentioned that I had already seen the film. “Was I too honest?” she asked.
To see Marta and you will get the answer.
Producers are Jane Cha Cutler, Alina Cho; Austin Wilkin; RJ Cutler, Trevor Smith.
Title: Marta
Distributor: Netflix (streaming now)
Director-screenwriter: R.J. Cutler
Judgement: R
Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes
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