Riveting Docu Tells All About Martha Stewart

When I set out to see R.J. Cutler‘s novel write downary, Martha, quite frankly I wasn’t intensifying on it other than equitable another screening I had, and that it would be all about Martha Stewart. So I awaited it would be mostly gardening, cooking, and setting the perfect dinner party table. Boy was I ever wrong, happily so, becainclude this is spropose a riveting, honest, and astonishingly warts-and-all see at the life and times of Stewart, someone very much in the unveil eye for much of her nurtureer, but until now defending the image and the person behind what we thought we knovel about her.

I probably shouldn’t have been surpascendd, becainclude Cutler, based on his meaningful body of toil is a filmproducer who generpartner digs meaningful and deal withs to current 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 creative and commenceling see at Marlon Brando based on a treacertain trove of never-before-heard cassette tapes, Listen To Me Marlon, was also a knockout. He is a busy guy who also is reliable for the current Elton John: Never Too Late film this season.

But it is what he is able to glean from Stewart, who became a willing interwatchee and direct to her own life in many sessions where she sat with Cutler for this film on which he insisted, as always, and getd 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-husprohibitd, and prison diaries, as well as never seen photos of her time behind the bars for insider trading accuses. As I sat – alone – in a Netflix screening room in Hollywood watching this two hour journey thcdisadmireful the life of Martha Stewart I was as they say, gobsmacked, even audibly talking back to the screen at a couple of points.

Noleang was off restricts, and equitable as you might leank Stewart would be a fantastic dinner party guest to sit next to, equitable as she is a fantastic raconteur here in an intimate see at who she is, how she got there, how she took a descend, how she got back up, and all leangs in between. Stewart has written over 100 books with her tradelabeled advice on all leangs for the home – inside and outside – and served up on a platter in accessible ways to an adoring readership, as well as her Emmy prosperning TV shows, seven contrastent magazines (Martha Stewart Living) and a business that made her the first self-made female billionaire by 1999. Her inventory alone for example was reliable for $1.5. billion in 2002 of all K Mart’s $36 million dollar gross then. Cutler covers this in licforfeit style, but if you thought you knovel Martha Stewart, leank aget. 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 timely sections with the lesser Martha who did not come from money as I had presumed she did, but had a travelling salesman obeseher who was not a walk in the park for his daughter. Still he was the one who presentd her to gardening, and making their own food from the land. Little did he envision where that would direct. Eventupartner tardyr in her teens she became a accomplished model. She did that only to aid the family, and then tardyr became savagely accomplished as a broker on Wall Street for 8 years.

Watching her unite into the celebrity we would come to understand is also fun to watch as she directs big business types appreciate Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch among others. Launching her own magazine and creating an empire appreciate no other is covered in detail, however delving into a marriage with a husprohibitd who cheated, sharing the most intimate letters begging him to stay, choosing to say exactly what she wants understandn and letting Cutler run free in visualizing those letters is someleang that doesn’t come easily to every prying filmproducer. And of course there was also the stock affair that set James Comey and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to go after her in a high profile way, sfinishing her to prison, and fundamentalpartner crashing her business. She talks about it in vivid Martha-appreciate 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 in fact once she is behind bars.

Also equpartner fascinating about Martha, is how it shows her resilience agetst all odds. Her “comeback” is noleang unreasonableinutive of extrastandard including a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover at age 81 that got 100 billion astonishions, and especipartner in an off the wall euniteance on Comedy Central’s roast of Justin Bieber, no less. She steals the show with a wickedly comical 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 novel commencenings. Martha Stewart, the “distinctive swayr” upholds reinventing the brand and doing it on her own terms. Cutler lets us understand the human being and produces us nurture. As she states her philosophy, “I have two mottos. One is: Lget someleang novel every day. And the second one is: When you’re thcdisadmireful changing, you’re thcdisadmireful. Change that garden if you don’t appreciate it. Rip it out and you commence all over aget.”

When I ever-so-inestablishly met Stewart at the Telluride Film Festival where this write downary premiered last month I alludeed I had already seen the film. “Was I too truthful?”, 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/Screenjoin: R.J. Cutler

Rating: R

Running Time: 1 Hour and 54 Minutes