When I set out to see R.J. Cutler‘s new documentary, Martha, quite frankly I wasn’t focusing on it other than just another screening I had, and that it would be all about Martha Stewart. So I expected it would be mostly gardening, cooking and setting the perfect dinner-party table.
Boy was I ever wrong, happily so, because this is simply a riveting, candid and surprisingly warts-and-all look at the life and times of Stewart, someone very much in the public eye for much of her career but until now guarding the image and the person behind what we thought we knew about her.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised, because Cutler is a filmmaker who generally digs deep and manages to present portraits of his subjects that haven’t been seen before. His docus on Anna Wintour, Billie Eilish and John Belushi are proof of that, and his innovative and startling look at Marlon Brando based on a treasure trove of never-before-heard cassette tapes, Listen to Me Marlon, also was a knockout. He is a busy guy who also is responsible for the current Elton John: Never Too Late this season.
But it is what he is able to glean from Stewart, who became a willing interviewee and guide to her own life in many sessions where she sat with Cutler for this film on which he demanded, as always, and received final cut. She also gave him extensive access to her own archives including tons of film footage, photos, diaries, letters to and from her ex-husband and prison diaries, as well as never-seen photos of her time behind the bars on insider-trading charges. As I sat — alone — in a Netflix screening room in Hollywood watching this two-hour journey through the life of Martha Stewart, I was gobsmacked, even audibly talking back to the screen at a couple of points.
Nothing was off limits, and just as you might think, Stewart would be a great dinner party guest to sit next to and a great raconteur. Martha takes an intimate look at who she is, how she got there, how she took a fall, how she got back up and all things in between. Stewart has written more than 100 books with her trademarked advice on all things for the home — inside and outside — and served up on a platter in accessible ways to an adoring readership. There’s also her Emmy-winning TV shows, seven different magazines (Martha Stewart Living) and a business that made her the first self-made female billionaire by 1999. Her inventory alone, for example, was responsible for $1.5. billion in 2002 of all Kmart’s $36 million gross then.
Cutler covers this in linear style, but if you thought you knew Martha Stewart, think again. This is a complicated portrait of a complicated personality but one we get to understand in ways I never thought possible or even thought about in the first place.
Particularly fascinating are the early sections with the young Martha, who did not come from money as I had assumed she did but had a traveling-salesman father who was not a walk in the park for his daughter. Still, he was the one who introduced her to gardening and making their own food from the land. Little did he imagine where that would lead. Later in her teens, she became a successful model. She did that only to support the family and then later became wildly successful as a broker on Wall Street for eight years.
Watching her merge into the celebrity we would come to know also is fun to watch as she navigates big-business types like Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch, among others. Launching her own magazine and creating an empire like no other is covered in detail, but delving into a marriage with a husband who cheated, sharing the most intimate letters begging him to stay, choosing to say exactly what she wants known and letting Cutler run free in visualizing those letters is something that doesn’t come easily to every prying filmmaker. Of course, there also was the stock scandal that set James Comey and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to go after her in a high-profile way, sending her to prison and basically crashing her business. Stewart talks about it in vivid Martha-like terms (“those prosecutors should have been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high”), and Cutler doesn’t stint on detailing it all, quite poignantly once she is behind bars.
Also equally fascinating about Martha, is how it shows her resilience against all odds. Her “comeback” is nothing short of remarkable, including a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover at age 81 that got 100 billion impressions and especially in an off-the-wall appearance on Comedy Central’s roast of Justin Bieber, no less. She steals the show with a wickedly funny routine and sits next to Snoop Dogg at the taping, an introduction that has led to their own professional pairing, proving life can provide strange detours and new beginnings.
Martha Stewart, the “original influencer,” keeps reinventing the brand and doing it on her own terms. Cutler lets us understand the human being and makes us care. She states her philosophy: “I have two mottos. One is, learn something new every day. And the second one is, when you’re through changing, you’re through. Change that garden if you don’t like it. Rip it out and you start all over again.”
When I ever-so-briefly met Stewart at the Telluride Film Festival, where this documentary premiered last month, I mentioned I had already seen the film. “Was I too honest?” she asked.
See Martha and you will get the answer.
Producers are Jane Cha Cutler, Alina Cho; Austin Wilkin; R.J. Cutler, Trevor Smith.
Title: Martha
Distributor: Netflix (Streaming now)
Director-screenwriter: R.J. Cutler
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hr 54 mins