“Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse” review: Documentation about the creator of “Maus”

New documentary by Molly Bernstein and Philip Doering Art Spiegelman: Disaster is my museRobert Crumb was the one who came to dinner.

In one of the film’s central scenes, Crumb and his late wife Irene Kominsky-Crum are joined by old friends Art Spiegelman and his wife Françoise Mouly broke bread and discussed their respective connections as giants of the underground comedy movement in the ’70s and ’80s. In this scene, Crumb is just a friendly and thoughtful old guy, a regular guy having an ordinary (if culturally significant) dinner with his ordinary friends.

Crumb’s ease in this scene is disarming, because while he’s just a colleague and colleague here, he means much more in the wider context of the film. Terry Zwigoff crumbs Casts an incredibly long shadow on any non-fiction film about artists, comedy or otherwise, but really casts an incredibly long shadow on any kind of biographical documentary. But while that film was a delightfully strange synergy of filmmaker and subject, Disaster is my museRobert Crumb just seems affable and dull – which is appropriate, as it turns out.

on PBS and ultimately premiering on DOC NYC Masters banner, Art Spiegelman: Disaster is my muse tends to be a bland, or at least dull, documentary. This is a portrait of a man whose greatest artistic achievement (Rats) is an autobiographical graphic novel in which he spent decades immersed in the creation of this achievement, then discussed it in the media and explained it in another book (Yuan Shu) and who, due to unfortunate real-life circumstances, have to continue discussing this achievement as it becomes increasingly important.

In other words, Art Spiegelman was an extraordinary artistic figure because of the Rats There is more. But he was also a figure who spent decades talking about himself and things Rats And conveyed this impression on camera. He was never hostile – this is a documentary that celebrates his life, no one forced him to do it after all – and if you know nothing about Art Spiegelman, he’s well worth learning about. Still, the man has been talking since the late ’70s about why he chose to depict Jews as rats in a comic about the Holocaust, and his character doesn’t allow him to pretend he doesn’t.

The point is Disaster is my muse Fittingly, it’s the role of tragedy in driving Spiegelman’s creative process. His parents were Holocaust survivors, and his brother died in Europe before he was born. His mother committed suicide while he was in college. In addition to the two volumes and companion volumes Ratshe wrote Shadow without Towerabout the terrorist attacks of September 11th. He was not a melancholy man, as should be clear to anyone who knew he was inspired crazy magazine, and another important co-creation of his was “Garbage Pail Kids”.

The creation of the latter is not widely mentioned Disaster is my musealthough it is acknowledged in passing, not as much as it needs to be. But it’s equally important for Spiegelman to talk about his relationship with his parents and how he grew up. Ratsthe documentary is better when he gives the impression that the topics discussed are either less rote or less laborious in their repetition.

He and Muley had the pleasure of discussing their relationship and the different publishing ventures they’ve collaborated on, from indie comics to their new yorker. The emergence of his daughter Nadja, who inspired his 9/11 novel, helps push Spiegelman’s story into a fresher setting.

Everything said is difficult Rats Sounds new. Literary scholar Hilary Chute has conducted a detailed panel-by-panel analysis of several key moments in the work, but when she says she Yuan Shu This is part of two years of interviews with Spiegelman, which is another way of saying, “You’re not going to get anything out of me that hasn’t been revealed before.” It’s all interesting, if a little stiff.

Even if the conversation is brought to the “now” moment, Disaster is my musice feels a bit out of place. Donald Trump’s election and first presidential administration forced Spiegelman to start talking again Rats In the context of anti-fascism, the right-wing push to ban some books in the early 1920s brought him back into the spotlight as an anti-censorship crusader. So theoretically, Spiegelman and Rats These topics are even more relevant today, but the interviews seem to have been conducted a year or two ago. I understand that filmmakers can’t keep their projects alive until the subject matter is no longer relevant for new reasons, but there’s a news cycle and this movie is behind it.

You can see a virtual timestamp in the documentary for Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who died in 2022. It was collected there and Neil Gaiman was one of the people featured in the documentary. Let Gaiman check out the original version of the panel Rats As a three-page comic strip in a magazine Interesting Amynas [sic] It must have seemed like a big “get” at the time, but with the author currently out of the spotlight following sexual assault allegations, it was an unnecessary distraction.

Together with Crum, Bill Griffith, film critic J. Hoberman and other colleagues, Disaster is my muse There is no shortage of less distracting people who could break down the importance of Spiegelman and his influence in legitimizing his chosen medium. The closing montage of the current comic/graphic novelist signing books for Spiegelman makes it feel like this might be something more important and immediate.

The documentary is overall engaging and putting Spiegelman in the spotlight is always worthwhile. but Disaster is my muse is in the shadows crumbsin the shadow of Maus , is a bit behind the times, in all sorts of disappointing ways.