
Reviewed by Brian Seibert / New York Times
"If I don’t dance, I’d rather die.”
That’s a rather melodramatic utterance, especially from a ballerina past the age when most retire. When Wendy Whelan, who has been called “America’s greatest contemporary ballerina,” says it in the documentary “Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan,” she undercuts the sentiment, acknowledging how ridiculous she might sound.
Still, she means it. Dance is her life. And her disarming combination of humility and honesty, making light of heavy emotions without concealing their true weight, has much to do with how thIs affecting film portrait can sneak up on you.
Directed by Linda Saffire and Adam Schlesinger, “Restless Creature” captures Ms. Whelan in 2013 at 46, as she’s struggling to recover from a potentially career-ending injury and facing pressure to give her final bows at New York City Ballet after nearly 30 years there. Following her as she begins to reinvent herself as a dancer outside of ballet, the film is both a comeback story and, more profoundly, a coming to terms with aging.
“Restless Creature” is tightly edited but patient, with as many uneventful scenes of physical therapy and cocktail parties as more dramatic footage of surgery and is-she-pushing-too-hard suspense. Ballet dancers are experts in masking pain. But through trust established between the filmmakers and Ms. Whelan, this film allows us to see her stoic control, her superhuman strength under pressure, and also to see through it — to the self-doubt, the fear of losing her very identity.
Ms. Whelan, who escaped injury for most of her career, says that she has lived her whole life in “a fantasy world,” believing she would never break. Grow up, she chides herself.
While recognizing the psychological truth in that self-assessment, the film discreetly complicates it with Ms. Whelan’s biography. (The X-ray of her 12-year-old spine, bent into an S-curve by scoliosis, is no fantasy image.) By the end, it’s easy to understand the judgment of a colleague that this anti-diva changed the profession.
The plentiful snippets of Ms. Whelan dancing signature roles give a cumulative sense of her gifts. Though a dance fan could wish for more sustained sequences, what comes across is less a performance than a person the viewer has come to know, dancing with people she loves in choreography made for her by friends (who may happen to be Christopher Wheeldon and Alexei Ratmansky). “Restless Creature” humanizes dance.
More remarkable, though, is how the film and Ms. Whelan, without falsification, turn an extreme form of midlife crisis into a heartening tale. “Restless Creature” makes the potential compensations of age seem as beautiful as any ballet.
DISCUSSION FOLLOWS EVERY FILM!
$6.00 Members / $10.00 Non-Members
TIVOLI THEATRE
5021 Highland Avenue I Downers Grove, IL
630-968-0219 I www.classiccinemas.com
"If I don’t dance, I’d rather die.”
That’s a rather melodramatic utterance, especially from a ballerina past the age when most retire. When Wendy Whelan, who has been called “America’s greatest contemporary ballerina,” says it in the documentary “Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan,” she undercuts the sentiment, acknowledging how ridiculous she might sound.
Still, she means it. Dance is her life. And her disarming combination of humility and honesty, making light of heavy emotions without concealing their true weight, has much to do with how thIs affecting film portrait can sneak up on you.
Directed by Linda Saffire and Adam Schlesinger, “Restless Creature” captures Ms. Whelan in 2013 at 46, as she’s struggling to recover from a potentially career-ending injury and facing pressure to give her final bows at New York City Ballet after nearly 30 years there. Following her as she begins to reinvent herself as a dancer outside of ballet, the film is both a comeback story and, more profoundly, a coming to terms with aging.
“Restless Creature” is tightly edited but patient, with as many uneventful scenes of physical therapy and cocktail parties as more dramatic footage of surgery and is-she-pushing-too-hard suspense. Ballet dancers are experts in masking pain. But through trust established between the filmmakers and Ms. Whelan, this film allows us to see her stoic control, her superhuman strength under pressure, and also to see through it — to the self-doubt, the fear of losing her very identity.
Ms. Whelan, who escaped injury for most of her career, says that she has lived her whole life in “a fantasy world,” believing she would never break. Grow up, she chides herself.
While recognizing the psychological truth in that self-assessment, the film discreetly complicates it with Ms. Whelan’s biography. (The X-ray of her 12-year-old spine, bent into an S-curve by scoliosis, is no fantasy image.) By the end, it’s easy to understand the judgment of a colleague that this anti-diva changed the profession.
The plentiful snippets of Ms. Whelan dancing signature roles give a cumulative sense of her gifts. Though a dance fan could wish for more sustained sequences, what comes across is less a performance than a person the viewer has come to know, dancing with people she loves in choreography made for her by friends (who may happen to be Christopher Wheeldon and Alexei Ratmansky). “Restless Creature” humanizes dance.
More remarkable, though, is how the film and Ms. Whelan, without falsification, turn an extreme form of midlife crisis into a heartening tale. “Restless Creature” makes the potential compensations of age seem as beautiful as any ballet.
DISCUSSION FOLLOWS EVERY FILM!
$6.00 Members / $10.00 Non-Members
TIVOLI THEATRE
5021 Highland Avenue I Downers Grove, IL
630-968-0219 I www.classiccinemas.com
DISCUSSION FOLLOWS EVERY FILM!
$6.00 Members / $10.00 Non-Members
TIVOLI THEATRE
5021 Highland Avenue I Downers Grove, IL
630-968-0219 I www.classiccinemas.com
$6.00 Members / $10.00 Non-Members
TIVOLI THEATRE
5021 Highland Avenue I Downers Grove, IL
630-968-0219 I www.classiccinemas.com