The public image of the playwright Arthur Miller has always been chilly and cerebral, perhaps best summed up in his explanation to a reporter of why he wouldn’t be attending the funeral of his ex-wife Marilyn Monroe, who committed suicide 18 months after they split: “She won’t be there.”
The signal achievement of Arthur Miller: Writer, a documentary made by his writer-filmmaker daughter Rebecca, is to introduce some color into that black-and-white picture. In old home movies and impromptu interviews shot over she shot over two decades, her father is seen joking, singing, building furniture (complete with the requisite cursing: “Goddamn angles drive you crazy,” he mutters when pieces don’t fit together), and swapping family folktales with his brothers and sisters.
Humanizing her father is at once the most singularly successful element of Rebecca Miller’s documentary, and the source of its failures. “He lived through so many different eras, almost like different lifetimes,” she says early during her narration of the documentary, an insightful observation. Television critic Glenn Garvin takes a closer look.
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