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Recently debuting at the Sundance Film Festival, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve story is a documentary that explores how life changed for beloved Superman star Christopher Reeve after a tragic horseriding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. Among the many emotional sequences in the film is the revelation that Reeve's celebrity pal Robin Williams had paid him a visit at the hospital soon after the accident. The film also touches on the close bond that the two actors had, with Williams addressing his relationship with Reeve in archival interview footage shown in the doc.
"I came in as a Russian proctologist, put on a glove and said, ‘We’re going to have to examine this thing,'" Williams said of visiting Reeve in the hospital in one piece of archival footage, per the Washington Post. It's also noted how Williams had partnered up with Reeve's second wife, Marsha, to help purchase a special van for the Superman actor, so he could make a personal appearance at the Academy Awards less than a month after his accident. Williams would later say that Reeve was a "brother" at the latter's 2004 funeral, commenting that Reeve was his rock, while Williams was "chaos for him."
The friendship between Christopher Reeve and Robin Williams went back to when they were roommates at Juilliard, before either of them would become very famous actors. In Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, Glenn Close comments on their friendship while sharing a heartbreaking theory, stating in the film, "I always felt that if Chris was still around, Robin would still be alive." Williams died by suicide ten years after Reeve's passing, and for viewers, this was one of the documentary's most emotional moments.
“I lost five pounds from the tears," one viewer was quoted as saying after leaving a Sundance screening of the film; there were also audible sobs heard throughout the audience constantly during the screening. Early reviews are also addressing how incredibly moving the movie is, with a review from Collider calling Super/Man an "emotional and compelling documentary shows that a true hero simply is someone who does the best they can with the means they’re given, the resilience of people, and how great power and change can come from even the most painful of experiences."
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is screening at Sundance but does not yet have a wide release date set. The film, which is co-directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui directed the film, is reportedly searching for a distributor at Sundance.
Source: The Washington Post
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