GLEASON – Review

Review by Stephen Tronicek

GLEASON  is simply an incredible documentary. As a film it’s shot well, it has a purpose, and its exploration of the football stars fight with ALS is fascinating and engaging.

Not too much can be said from a critical standpoint about the film, though. There aren’t actors so there are no  performances to judge. This isn’t written so there’s no writing or plot or structure to judge. There’s just real life, and the strength Gleason takes from it. The feelings of bubbling nostalgia, and unwanted fear that come with the passage of time,  also representing the idea that hope and self-fulfillment will come in life. Gleason as a film holds the simple purpose of showing the audience what it’s like to live in Steve Gleason’s shoes and luckily that is enough to analyze the previously mentioned themes of life.

Steve Gleason is a good person, an almost endlessly positive man-child that inspires in his simple resilience. He’s also an incredibly smart person, who in his speech reveals a well-read and philosophical mind. His musings without pretense may have seemed pretentious, but that’s the benefit of a documentary. Coming from a written character this might all come off as clunky, but coming from a real man everything is poetic. In his shoes and the shoes of his family, we watch his confrontation with the religious aspects of his life, and the personal aspects of his life and all of this is wrenching because it’s authentic and so is Steve Gleason. His wife, Michel Varisco-Gleason, and his son, Rivers, are also big players in the documentary as snippets of a video log that Gleason made to teach his son about life becomes a paramount framing device for the film. Michel and Rivers, like Steve, make for interesting characters as Rivers is born and grows into a boy only vaguely understanding the situation that his family is in and Michel powerfully keeps her family together. The overall effect of hanging around Steve Gleason and his family is one of warmth, but also stress and that brew of emotions make for a cathartic effect.

That’s all GLEASON , as a film, needed to do. It needed to tell the story. Put us in the place of Steve Gleason and let us bask in his delightful personality and the hardships this personality,  and his family, help him deal with.  It was nice to go along with Steve Gleason, hardships and all.

4 1/2 of 5 Stars

GLEASON is playing in St. Louis exclusively at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater.