Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold

A film that carefully cronicles one of the best writers of our century. I found it thought provoking and although sad, one would be remiss to not watch it. Especially helpful for younger generations who perhaps did not grow up reading her books, but can still appreciate their appeal.

It is always interesting to find persons/people who you may not know (I can only talk about myself) and discover what they are about. You may wonder why one would choose to watch a documentary about a person they don't even know, but that is not how I choose the movies I watch. If something sounds interesting, I go ahead and watch it.

And yes the woman in question is more than interesting and the documentary about her is finely crafted. I do think that you get more than a picture of the woman and maybe even find out things you didn't know (if you knew her from before unlike me)

I'm usually cautious around docs with a nepotistic bent to them from which you learn little in what basically turns out to be a valentine on the subject. Writer Director Nora Ephron's son did a hollow one on his mom while photog Annie Liebovitz's sister offered up a cringing love letter to her in American Masters. Maria Riva, daughter of Marlene Dietrich on the other hand has given a warts an all interview (available on You Tube) that cooked from start to finish that is well worth the watch for many reasons.

In Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, her nephew actor Griffin Dunne may have wanted to approach the 80 plus year old Didion gingerly but the feisty 75 pounder was not about to have it showing the same determination in getting the story right as she did nearly half a century ago chronicling the American scene, especially the West Coast. With an incredibly keen sense of observation she displayed a grasp of an era with a clarity and incite while fellow contemporaries such as Thompson, Mailer and Breslin relied on hyperbole and slap happy verbosity.

Brought up on gloom, Donner Party bed time stories, it never seemed to be far from the stoic Didion, questioning what love was regarding her author husband that she partnered with professionally as well. Her adopted daughter found her remote. It is perhaps this distance that made her a superb reporter, memoirist. Always observing, never immersing. When spouse and daughter pass her true love kicks in and she writes a masterpiece around the husband, a play around the daughter.

Director Dunne has superior entry and makes the most of old newsreels along with an avalanche of family photos to give the doc a fine look including impressive visual backdrops, such as snow draped NYC, to her words. We find out Warren Beatty had the hots for her but he does step gently around her emaciated ( anorexia?) look as well obvious MS symptoms. But when queried about a scene 50 years earlier of witnessing a 5 year old on LSD she bluntly calls it "gold." Classic JD, honest and objective to the core. A rare quality to be found in today's world of blatantly bias journalism.

I really appreciated this film because of the extensive amount of archival research it took to put this together. Full disclosure: I was not a huge Didion fan, even less so familiar with her work. But this was a fun and enlightening journey delving into nearly every facet of Didion's career and personal life. Although captivating it became a tad bit too prosaic defined by the B story diversions that would have presented better in brief, this just being my humble opinion of course. If you're a Didion fan this is a must see, obviously.

Writer Joan Didion's distant relatives crossed the frontier to the Promised Land (California), but not before traveling some stretch of the journey with the doomed Donner party, who separated from the Didions to cross uncharted terrain. Preparing for disaster is something Didion was taught at a young age, knew with certainty as an adult, and then maybe forgot about and had to learn again in 2003 when her adopted daughter, Quintana, became sick and was hospitalized just before Didion's husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, died of a heart attack. This stylishly-presented documentary on Didion's life, produced and directed by Didion's nephew, Griffin Dunne, promises to be a heady spread for Netflix and, indeed, we get a thorough blueprint of Joan Didion's long and winding journey. Tracing the author's path from University of California, Berkeley graduate to Vogue magazine writer in New York City in the 1950s, to author of her first novel, "Run, River" in 1963, to becoming Dunne's wife, to their move to Southern California in 1965 and adopting a baby, we get a sense of Didion's spirit as she speaks but nothing much in the way of her personality. What Griffin Dunne extracts from his subject in a recent interview is lovely frosting--listening to Joan and watching her expressive hands reaching out, pell-mell, in dramatic emphasis--but there isn't a substantial, emotional base underneath this. Vintage interview footage of Didion from cable shows and "60 Minutes" actually tell us more about Joan than what we're getting from Griffin Dunne. Interviews with friends and fellow writers add a dash of color, but no insight (actor Harrison Ford, Didion's carpenter in the early '70s, sits down just long enough to tell us how nice Dunne and Didion were to he and his family). Joan's path in life led her back to New York City, where she turned her 2005 book about grieving, "The Year of Magical Thinking", into a Broadway play starring Vanessa Redgrave. It helps to close the film on a warm note, though interested parties will learn far more about Didion just by reading one of her books--or, if pressed for time, her Wikipedia page. **1/2 from ****