An incomplete portrait of Anthony Bourdain

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

---

A “fun” little game if you are having thoughts of suicide is to answer honestly when someone asks you how you are doing. The dissociative contrast between internal pain and the external performance of being a happy, functioning adult is exhausting, not least because you can paddle contentedly, enjoy the warmth of the sun on your face, when a hand appears and grabs you by. ankle, throwing you into the cold and dark. Some hide this inner conflict better than others, and many were shocked when Anthony Bourdain, obviously the luckiest man in the world, death by suicide on June 8, 2018. But as we discover in Roadrunner: A film about Anthony Bourdain, for the late chef, author and globetrotting television host, the effort required to maintain a safe distance between the private Tony and the public Tony was Herculean.

Bourdain was famous, on top of everything else, and didn’t just have to do a greedy bad-boy act for the cameras; he had to play with the idea that others had of Anthony Bourdain on the streets and in restaurants and wherever he went for decades. Eventually he became famous enough to be isolated from the rest of the world by attendants and demarcated VIP areas and all the other attributes of celebrity. It was then that things started to get out of hand. Bourdain was cursed with the gifts of being effortlessly eloquent and charismatic, worldly and spiritual and, yes, a little cynical, but never elitist or unapproachable. His curiosity and his passion were genuine, and people responded to that. Which must have been great, at least for a little while.

To be clear, Roadrunner is very far from being an advertisement for suicide. It would be horribly irresponsible, and also inconsistent with the style of its director, Oscar-winning actor Morgan Neville. As he proved with his latest feature biographical documentary, the film Mr. Rogers Won’t you be my neighbor?, Neville is good at tear gas. And yes, the end of this film is quite moving, as Bourdain’s friends, colleagues and family members try to express the bewildering void Bourdain left behind. (Perhaps saddest of all, Eric Riper, Bourdain’s friend and colleague who discovered his body while they were filming outdoors in France, simply says, “I’m not talking about that day.” ) But the majority of the movie doesn’t. t wallow in sentimentality. How could he, when Bourdain tells his own life story?

Between his CNN shows No reservation, unknown parts, and The stopover—everything Bourdain wrote and recounted himself – a massive archive of video and audio recordings is available for someone like Neville to recreate Bourdain’s voice from beyond the grave. The majority of Roadrunner has the lively, swirling quality of the Host’s Travel Series. We start with the heady days shortly before Confidential Kitchen has become a bestseller and proceeds chronologically through two decades of televised voyages, which gain weight as the crew witness historical events such as the outbreak of the war in Lebanon in 2006. Neville also indulges in one of his subject’s favorite techniques by lifting excerpts from Bourdain’s favorite films and incorporating them into the narrative; scenes from Apocalypse now accompany images of an exotic trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example.

Neville’s deference to his late subject’s voice also extends to the darker and more disturbing aspects of Bourdain’s personality. As if to announce that Roadrunner isn’t going to shy away from what we all know is happening, the director opens his film with audio from Bourdain caustically discussing how, when he died, he would like to be stuffed into a wood chipper and sprayed all over the bourgeois clientele of the great Harrod’s London flagship store. In interview clips and behind-the-scenes footage, Bourdain’s insecurities, morbid fixations, and restless spirit plague him and his loved ones. But Neville reserves his judgment.

That is, until we get to the last year of Bourdain’s life, when he was caught up in a whirlwind romance with actress and director Asia Argento that led him to become a strong supporter of #MeToo. Longtime agents, producers and crew interviewed in the film clearly dislike Argento, and Neville puts a much sunnier turn on Bourdain’s domestic life with his second wife, Ottavia Busia, than on his relationship no. conventional with the adventurous actor. He’s not reckless enough to blame her for her death, but there’s a palpable change in tone as she steps into the narrative. And while Argento is indeed a complicated person, the fact that she does not appear in the film to defend herself – and that none of the other interviewees defend her – translates into a biased indulgence towards the sexist trope of the femme fatale, especially given the note of raw, unresolved pain that this movie ends on.

There have been many myths about Bourdain in the three years since his death, and the implication that he died amid the rubble of a tortured affair with a cruel woman is not the only story that Neville relates. It’s as if Bourdain didn’t exist before he became famous. The discussion of his childhood is limited to a brief segment that gives the mistaken impression that he grew up in Provincetown, Massachusetts, when he was actually originally from New Jersey. Brief references are made to his fondness for Iggy Pop, but it remains for us to infer how downtown New York City shaped his worldview. And while one interview subject says, “People forget Tony was a junkie,” that’s all the film does to refresh us on this time in his life.

This may be due to a lack of source material. Why, after all, would there be images of Bourdain when he was just a simple line cook, especially in the ’80s and’ 90s, before every moment of everyone’s life was constantly documented. ? But that seems unbalanced for a film that purports to raise the curtain on a beloved public figure to treat that character as if he was fully formed in the late ’90s as a lapidary Athena of the head of Zeus. A lot of people watching Roadrunner will do it out of affection for Bourdain, a pop saint of vagrants and troubled souls everywhere. And in terms of celebrating her life by letting us once again soak up her passionate and inspiring presence, the film is successful. But viewers should take one more note of the man himself and not fall for easy scapegoats and mundane narratives, whether about countries or someone who has dedicated their life to exploring them.