Wednesday, July 7, 2010
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Wednesday, July 7, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work
In The Left Corner,
Vulnerable. In The Right Corner, Relentless
Joan Rivers, reflected, in the Ricki Stern-Annie Sundberg
documentary on the legendary comedienne.
IFC Films
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Wednesday, July 7, 2010
*-with correction
Some people think she's a piece of something, all right.
Joan Rivers first burst into my consciousness in the mid-1970s, and I remember her
almost as vividly as she is chronicled in the brilliant Ricki Stern and Annie
Sundberg documentary "Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work", which is making its way
around the country now. The film is playing now in San Francisco at the
Embarcadero Center Cinemas, among other venues in the U.S.
The Stern-Sundberg documentary is an absolute, no-holds barred winner, showing
Ms. Rivers as diva, enfant terrible, compassionate soul and tireless worker.
"I could choose to live carefully, but that's so ridiculous", Ms. Rivers says
early on, perhaps attempting to justify the opulence of her ostentatious
Manhattan living quarters.
"A Piece Of Work" chronicles the New York City-bred entertainer and comedienne
in 2008 -- during which she celebrates her 75th birthday -- and into mid-2009.
The documentary plays like a concert on the rigors and rewards of show business,
a cut-throat arena where politics are unavoidable and at least one person in the
world roots for you to fail. Ms. Rivers is fully aware of these variables,
and makes no secret of her fears. It isn't age or even death that concerns
her, it's the termination of a long career in the spotlight that sparks her
innermost fears.
The indefatigable Ms. Rivers is always unguarded here, and the filmmakers wisely
avoid glamorizing or prettifying her, even when the jokes she tells sometimes
divide, repel or appall her audiences. (And even then, Ms. Rivers' jokes
are almost always hilarious.) She tackles race, sex, being Jewish,
relationships, age, death, illness, politics and everything in between.
Joan Rivers' story, when viewed via "A Piece Of Work" is that of an
indefatigable and unfailingly kind matriarch and genius maverick tasked with
keeping a family of different players on an ever-shifting chessboard. Her
confidant and manager drifts in and out of the landscape. Her daughter
Melissa have an interesting dynamic, one that ostensibly typifies the
mother-daughter rubric.
Even when tragedy strikes this Rivers keeps rolling like one. Today's
comediennes -- the Kathy Griffins and Sarah Silvermans of the world, owe a debt
to her. Miss Griffin, featured in the film, astutely points to Moms Mabley
and Phyllis Diller as legendary forerunners to Ms. Rivers, of whom one person in
the film says "will do anything".
Ms. Stern and Ms. Sundberg, who three years ago directed the powerful
documentary "The Devil Came On Horseback", let Ms. Rivers ride her own wagon
train either into or out of the audience's hearts. Many however, will be
too busy laughing to be aware of how neutral the film feels. The
filmmakers succeeds mightily in covering the arc of a career that triumphantly
rages on. "A Piece Of Work" is a fascinating statement about survival in
an unforgiving business where friends could become foes. Ms. Rivers is
depicted as the perennial outsider who has earned respect, yet -- for those
uninitiated with the princess of comedy -- still doesn't get the glory her male
counterparts enjoy.
"Face time", Ms. Rivers says at one point. She will repeat this and as she
does we hear in her voice just how much those two words mean to her. It's
not that Ms. Rivers has dramatically transformed over the years so much as she
has defined who she is and stubbornly held fast to the independent,
take-no-prisoners profile that keeps her soaring yet steps away from melancholy.
Ms. Rivers would rather be called a lifer than an icon, but when all the
histrionics, plastic surgeries and heartbreaks have been aired in "A Piece Of
Work", what's left is a naked vessel of vulnerability and savvy in Joan
Rosenberg, who has skillfully evaded the jackals after all this time, even if
the arrows that have pierced her over the decades have been tipped with poison.
"Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association
Of America for language and sexual humor, some of it graphic. The film's
duration is one hour and 24 minutes.
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