Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (2021)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
Anyone familiar with Anthony Bourdain is going to be drawn to learn more about the enigmatic life of the revered and award-winning writer, chef, and television personality.
Morgan Neville has quietly become one of our best documentarians - increasingly able to find the soul of the subjects he features while giving space to those who them the most.
Perhaps similar to those who knew Bourdain personally, Roadrunner will leave you laughing, frustrated, emotional, and deeply connected to a complicated, unsettled man.
NO
Many are right to question the way the film handles/treats actress and filmmaker Asia Argento, and the relationship she shared with Bourdain in the last years of his life.
If you are not a fan of Anthony Bourdain, I guess you would have no interest in spending time with this.
Provides a fair assessment of Bourdain in front of the camera and behind-the-scenes. That the film lacks definitive closure may be one of the points Neville is making, but may prove frustrating to some looking for answers as to why Bourdain died by suicide in 2018.
OUR REVIEW
What a fascinating and troubled man Anthony Bourdain was. As a hesitant celebrity who would come to embrace adventure, with the world at his beck and call, he increasingly seemed to use his love/hate relationship with being a celebrity as an opportunity to run from unrelenting mental health torment and pain.
With six Emmys and a Peabody Award for his CNN travelogue television series, “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” the former world-famous chef and bestselling author’s shift into a global jetsetter brought images, stories, and history from all over the world to millions of viewers in a digestible, unique, and fascinating way.
Even with a descent into erratic behavior in the last year or two of his life, those we knew Bourdain, both on and off camera, were shocked when the news broke that, on June 8, 2018, he had died by suicide in a French hotel room. Found by his best friend, Éric Rispert, Bourdain left no note. In hindsight, the last several episodes of “Parts Unknown” may have hinted at, or foretold premonitions of a man who felt isolated, depressed, and lost within a world largely of his own creation.
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is a powerful, affecting documentary, with Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) detailing the fortuitous rise of Bourdain from 20-something chef in and around New York City to executive chef for Les Halles, based in Manhattan, and best-selling author and television host in the 2000s.
His book, “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” was a ripping away of the curtain and a devil-could-care reveal of the restaurant business. Firmly entrenched in the New York Times Best Sellers list, and rattling the industry as a whole, fame came calling for Bourdain - something he was likely not built to handle.
Roadrunner features several of Bourdain’s friends - many of whom worked or appeared on his CNN show and its predecessor, “A Cook’s Tour” on Food Network. They paint the portrait of a complicated man who slowly became immersed in, consumed by his fame. The very thing he didn’t want became the thing he ran towards whenever things became tough.
Neville reveals that anything Bourdain tried, he committed to it wholeheartedly. While able to overcome an addiction to heroin and other hard drugs in his 20’s, he seemingly replaced those highs with writing, television and frequent travel.
For all the experiences captured on screen, Bourdain’s absence away from family was substantial: the obligations of his television persona led to the end of his first marriage of nearly 20 years. A second wife, Ottavia, and the birth of a daughter (his only child) would follow and then fall apart because Bourdain seemed more comfortable running towards adventure than finding comfort in the domesticity of family life.
Bourdain was just such a commanding presence. His voice alone filled a room. His long, thin frame and hot-and-cold demeanor drew people in, wanting to be closer to him. Neville punctuates this point with a dizzying array of footage from decades of Bourdain being filmed. We see behind-the-scenes footage from his various television work, home videos, even clips captured by news crews when he worked as a Manhattan chef. An evocative portrait emerges of a dynamic, charismatic man who, whether he realized it or not, impacted everyone he came into contact with.
As good as much of this is, and as powerful a tribute as Neville crafts for viewers, there is one significant issue hanging over Roadrunner. One cannot discuss Bourdain without analyzing his final years. And in those last years of his life, following the dissolution of his second marriage, he entered into a whirlwind, consumptive relationship with Italian director and actor Asia Argento. She appeared in an episode of “Parts Unknown” and soon thereafter, the two became inseparable.
Neville takes a risk with the Bourdain/Argento story in that she was never interviewed or invited to participate in the film. Neville has said that their entire romance was little more than gossip fodder, and that the tabloid-rich messiness of their time together would offer little to nothing to the film overall. However, he nonetheless discusses it, content with letting those closest to Bourdain heap considerable anger and frustration at Argento.
We are told she basically ruined a shoot of “Parts Unknown,” impossible to work with when Bourdain wanted her to direct an episode of his show. We learn he was infatuated with her, see footage of his supporting her through her sharing of harrowing stories of rape and sexual assault during the #MeToo movement. Some express concern that Bourdain was emotionally suffocating Argento, pouring everything he had into their relationship. Then we see that shortly before his death, a tabloid story would emerge that Argento may have found a new lover while presumably still involved with Bourdain.
For someone to claim the story is tabloid-fodder and then give considerable time to it, without involving the woman at the center of all of it, feels queasy and grossly unfair. There is seldom a nice comment uttered about Argento, and Neville has not made a history of tearing people down with his work. Why now?
Perhaps Neville’s approach is that as Bourdain’s death still affects so many of those closest to him - with no note, no indication of why it happened - people will search for reasons; apparently even at the expense of someone else. Still, the Bourdain/Argento moments of Roadrunner are a halting presence to an otherwise captivating and moving film.
In the end, Bourdain never asked for fame. When he needed it, he clutched it tight to his chest. And as he ran around the world, experiencing so many unbelievable adventures, his life reminds us that even roadrunners lose their stamina and can only sustain their speed for so long.
CAST & CREW
Featuring: Anthony Bourdain, Éric Rispert, Ottavia Bourdain, David Chang, Helen M. Cho, David Choe, Christopher Collins, Morgan Fallon, Josh Homme, John Lurie, Alison Mosshart, Doug Quint, Lydia Tenaglia, Tom Vitale
Director: Morgan Neville
Release Date: July 16, 2021
Focus Features