‘Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie’ Review: A Star’s Dignity

This is probably less a critique than a thank-you note to director Davis Guggenheim and to the subject of “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” a marriage of exhilaration and sadness and, despite the title, the most moving thing on television. Mr. Fox was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars when he was diagnosed in 1991 with Parkinson’s disease, which finally forced his full retirement in 2021. His sense of humour remains a wonder. Something most viewers will only have to wonder, fortunately, is whether they would maintain the same dignity under the same set of circumstances.

The title, “Still,” describes something the actor never seemed to be, as evidenced by the voluminous collection of film clips Mr. Guggenheim uses to structure much of the film—Mr. Fox was always running, from “Teen Wolf,” to “The Secret of My Success,” to “Bright Lights, Big City,” to the blockbuster “Back to the Future” franchise and in and out of “Family Ties,” the sitcom that established his comedy credentials and wide appeal. Much of the background action, as well as Mr. Fox’s early biography, is covered through dramatic re-creations and otherwise unconnected film scenes knitted into a coherent narrative. The research must have been strenuous; the editing, too. The pace is nonstop, the humour abundant, the devotion of Mr. Fox’s wife, actress Tracy Pollan, is made plain, and there’s no small amount of nostalgia in store for people who know and love the Fox filmography. But the heart and soul of the film are the face-to-face interviews, which are far less delicate than one might expect. And all the deeper for it.

Seven interviews were conducted over the span of a year, and at one point Mr. Fox and his director (an Oscar winner for “An Inconvenient Truth”) are getting back together after some time, the subject recounting how he basically had, in the interim, fallen and broken his face. Mr. Guggenheim reacts with alarm; his subject is almost blasé. “Gravity is real,” he says, laughing. “Even if you’re only falling from my height.” During a walk along Fifth Avenue with an aide, Mr. Fox is recognised by a fan and when he turns to say hello back, he topples to the sidewalk. “You knocked me off my feet,” he tells the passerby. Everyone smiles, but it breaks your heart.

“I can see in your eyes that you’ve got a great one-liner,” Mr. Guggenheim says to the actor at a point in their exchanges, “and then it has a problem getting to your mouth.” Mr. Fox doesn’t disagree; he doesn’t have to, and often lets a nonresponse compensate when a response would be thwarted by his ailment. As Mr. Guggenheim says, the predictable storyline in a Michael J. Fox movie now would be about a huge star getting a debilitating disease and being crushed by it. “Yeah,” Mr. Fox says, “that’s boring.” Nothing in “Still” is the least bit boring.

Nor is it preachy, or weepy, or looking for pity for its subject, who isn’t looking for any either. He does recall feeling at some point, post-diagnosis, that he was somehow reaping cosmic payback for the enormous if less-than-overnight success he had enjoyed after several seemingly immovable objections fell and he was cast in “Family Ties.” (His tales of Hollywood poverty are close to harrowing although, as he might say, he got over it.) If there’s a flaw in “Still,” it might be Mr. Fox’s reluctance to discuss his physical agony or the psychic struggle that comes with Parkinson’s. (“The worst thing is to be confined,” he says, answering one of Mr. Guggenheim’s very direct questions. “To have no way out.”) You come close, Mr. Guggenheim says about Mr. Fox discussing his pain, “and then you dart away.” But that is a principal reason his subject, and film, are so involving and watchable and rich.