Weekend Watch: Documentary Oscar Contender ‘Gleason’ Puts You Through an Emotional Wringer

Weekend Watch is here for you. Every Friday we’re going to recommend the best of what’s new to rent on VOD or stream for free. It’s your weekend; allow us to make it better. 

What to Stream This Weekend

There’s a tendency, and maybe this is only among people who review movies for a living, to distrust movies that make you cry. And Gleason is a movie that will make you cry. The 2016 documentary distributed by Amazon Studios is about Steve Gleason, who played pro football for the New Orleans Saints from 2000-2007, was diagnosed with ALS — or Lou Gehrig’s Disease — in 2011, not long before his wife, Michel Rae Varisco, gave birth to their son, Rivers. Gleason is a chronicle of Steve and Michel’s life from his diagnosis through his treatment and the overall degradation of his condition as it progressed, and it’s remarkable not only for how many times this heartbreaking story gets you to cry, but also how close it’s able to get to these people, and how that closeness brings out a more complex and ultimately enlightening story than what you might expect.

Gleason‘s story begins with Steve Gleason’s crowning achievement as a pro football player: blocking a punt for a touchdown in the Saints’ first game back in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, a moment that has become NFL legend, much more for its social impact on New Orleans than its athletic achievement. But the ALS diagnosis isn’t too far down the road; one of the more forceful impressions of the film is how quickly after diagnosis Steve begins to show signs of deterioration. We’re told that ALS patients have a life expectancy of 2-5 years after diagnosis, and we see how quickly Steve’s speech begins to slur. At nine months post-diagnosis, he stumbles as he walks. The terror of ALS is that the path is as predictable as it is unalterable. Steve and Michel know he’s going to lose motor functions, his ability to speak, his ability to move without a wheelchair, and ultimately his ability to breathe on his own. The birth of baby Rivers lends even more urgency to the story, as Steve begins a race against time to pass on as much as he can to his son.

It’s a credit to director Clay Tweel and cinematographers David Lee, Ty Minton-Small, and Sean Pamphilon that they are able to achieve the kind of closeness with their subjects as they do with Gleason and his family. While the film employs liberal use of first-person recordings made by Steve, there are also many scenes of shocking intimacy. Steve’s relationship with his father gets a good deal of focus, as his dad attempts to reach his son through his faith, which is a conflict point for both Steve and Michel, and which leads to some bracingly articulate moments of pain and recrimination between father and son. The continuum of father-to-son relationships from Steve’s father to Steve to Rivers is not lost on the filmmakers, and it’s a narrative that comes through clearly. It’s also an immense relief to see that the film doesn’t leave Michel to the side, nor does it cast her in easy-yet-condescending roles of sainted caregiver or beleaguered wife/mother. Michel emerges as a fierce figure of strength, but her armor is not bullet-proof. Watching the ways in which Steve’s ALS wears down on her at every single turn are both devastating and rewarding.

“Devastating and rewarding” is a good way to describe Gleason as a whole. The movie does a very smart thing in that it depicts Steve and Michel’s efforts towards raising money for ALS and helping to lobby the government for better medical assistance for ALS patients as accomplishments but not triumphs. Many times, we’re shown the juxtaposition between public victories and the private toll it takes on them. It’s not that the filmmakers are denying Steve and Michelle these victories. The battles they face to bring awareness to the disease and the battles they face at home are not the same thing.

The result of this kind of unsparing closeness the filmmakers achieve with Gleason and his family means we get moments of bracing honesty and also genuine, brutal heartbreak. Not even Eddie Vedder — yes, Steve’s favorite band is Pearl Jam, and yes, Vedder and Mike McCready both show up in the film as allies for his foundation — is spared from the tear-jerking. This is a movie that doesn’t turn its head away from what’s at stake for Steve Gleason and his family any more than he can.

Earlier this month, Gleason made the short list of finalists for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Along with 14 other films — including frontrunners 13th, Weiner, and O.J.: Made in America — it will now be screened by the Documentary branch of the Academy. Nominees will be announced January 24th.

 

Stream 'Gleason' on Prime Video.