Martha

Martha: Over her time in the media, Stewart has transitioned from a teenage model to an upper crust caterer, a domestic deity, a media empire, a scapegoat, and lastly to an 80-year-old thirst trap endorsed by Snoop Dog. You just cannot make this up, or at least, make it convincing in any way.

This is an unlikely trajectory that has been executed for the most part in the limelight which makes R.J. Cutler’s task with his new documentary film for Netflix, Martha, quite peculiar. Image if you will some young followers who have never pondered what the famous Martha Stewart looked like before she started throwing dinner parties for Snoop. Older viewers however may have believed Stewart after spending time at the prison laughingly referred to as Camp Cupcake, simply never reappeared again after feeling the shame.

These are probably the target markets of the 115-minute picture out of the many possible types. Those wondering enough who has been greatly impressed by martha Stewart to know that there is something of an interest in her. It’s a very very simple, almost blatantly so narrative that is documentarian in style, where the eureka moments are far more constrained by your knowledge than the creator’s intentions.

Of the things that sustain Martha’s interest, however, it is watching Cutler engage in battle with his subject which stands out. Being a documentarian, Cutler has done films on the likes of Anna Wintour and Dick Cheney; prickly stars are familiar territory to him and with Martha Stewart, he has a heroine who possesses ample power and a well deserved don’t give a attitude, where she will say whatever she sees fit, only when and where she sees fit to do so.

There is a time when she is an ice queen, there is a time when she is as open as it needs to be; in this context, Stewart turns Martha into a joint venture: what she would like to explain to the audience and what Cutler would like for the audience to believe. And the latter quite a lot, as opposed to the completely bland biographical setting and the formal style which is dull and predictable, is funny.

Since the start of his career as a director Cutler has paid his attention only to Stewart. All of these new interviews he has filmed for the documentary, with friends and with co workers and family and even a few adversaries, but only Stewart speaks on camera.

These situations are different from all the others. In such cases, it is the talking mouths that have the privileges, and not the faces of the boats. In this manner, these people are obliged to give their opinions in Temos which have to be placed after shots of Martha throughout the ages along with current shots that Stewart permitted the filmmakers to take of her decorated Turkey Hill farmhouse.

These “access” scenes, where Stewart interacts with the audiences while completely ignoring the camera, are representative of her general way in the documentary which I want to paraphrase as, lets say “I am ready to offer you my attention but that is only when it is comfortable for me.”

At 83 and still more active than almost any other person on this planet, Stewart does not require this documentary as such, the documentary requires her, a fact that she is well aware of. Cutler continues to bring stewart out of her equilibrium and even includes himself when he is trying to explain different situations to stewart like what happened between her and her husband that still makes her upset and what she did during that time.

Stewart maintains whenever it is possible that she is not involved in active interactions on the more delicate issues by providing correspondence with psychotic and her prison diary and allowing cutler the freedom to deal with such less revealing sources to do as he wishes.

“Are they appropriate letters?” she asks him about the letters after the monotonous conversation regarding the end of her marriage, “Or do they explain why I don t enjoy it,” she sighs in conclusion.

And Cutler is doing so and at times places a voiceover actor to read the letters or diary entries and uses ordinary images of still photographs to cover the non-speaking parts.

As Stewart has Cutler fill in certain blanks, the viewer too is often forced to read between the lines which the director views indispensable. In the back-and-forth regarding their romances, he speaks of having talked to Andy, her former husband, but we never hear Andy in the program. You could take it as you will.

And take it as you will that she holds producer Mark Burnett responsible for her “post-prison” daytime show’s failure for not grasping her brand which perhaps explains Burnett’s absence and the disinterest towards the Martha Stewart Show as a seeming catastrophe, it aired 116245 episodes in 7 seasons.

And the fact that The Apprentice: Martha Stewart is dismissed entirely as if it had never happened. The absences and omissions are especially pronounced in the second part of her biography which may be characterized in one line: “Everything was bad, And then she made fun of Justin Bieber, and everything was good.”

From time to time, Stewart seems to me to cross the threshold of politeness. Thus, comment on a reporter from New York Post who was present at the trial: “She’s dead now, thank goodness. Nobody has to put up with that crap that she was writing”. However, it is not crossing the line. It is clinical, premeditated and uncompromisingly ruthless.

Other times, Stewart has taken to rolling her eyes in contempt, or staring in Cutler’s direction, expectantly waiting for him to move on to the next point. That alone is scalp surgery enough.

Stewart doesn’t get any credit in the war producers of Martha, and I’m quite sure this is something she may have not wanted to go near again. But on the other hand, such an inclination is equally felt that in that pace either she has developed a theme of the documentary or she is helping Cutler in developing his own definite theme. Her obsession with perfectionism as portrayed in the first half of the documentary is emphasized repetitively and at the end of it, she reflects her life’s journey saying, ‘to me, imperfection is something that one can learn to live with.’

While watching her with Cutler or with her employees, one gets the impression that these are the activities of a light and creative person who has momentarily compromised her strong work ethic. Instead, she has set sights on an ‘imperfect’ persona that fictitiously exists, and she has mastered every bit of it. As she would say, for the good.

Watch free movies like on Fmovies