Salinger (2013)

What makes it different from others?

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm a pretty huge fan of Salinger's work, and that I didn't go into this doc expecting very much. After all, what can you say about a man who famously kept his personal life as far away from the public eye as possible? As I found out, Shane Salerno's answer to that is "speculation, speculation, speculation."Not only was the technical quality of this film fairly sophomoric-- a heavy-handed score, the same "reenactments" repeated over and over, visual effects and transitions that looked like they came straight out of iMovie-- but a good portion of it was made up of (entirely white male) talking heads from Hollywood who had nothing to do with Salinger, relating tales of how The Catcher in the Rye changed their lives. That has no place in a documentary that is actually concerned with learning and teaching about a person, but it fits perfectly here, where it's clear that the filmmakers were most interested in duping Salinger fans with irrelevant anecdotes and padding out their scant "evidence" for Salinger's reclusiveness into a two-hour movie.And it's exactly his reclusiveness that the movie purports to be about, yet they seem to miss the most obvious conclusion: Salinger was a man like any other. There was no deeper meaning to the fact that he didn't want the media or rabid fans in his life, other than his rather private personality. Looking for one, claiming to have found it, and reeling an audience in for two hours of baseless accusations and factual errors, is frankly selfish and irritating. A person's life isn't ours to dissect and claim for ourselves, whether or not that person made something meaningful to us. Where these filmmakers could have created something touching and human, they created a morbid spectacle around a man who liked nothing less, and to me, that's pathetic and sad.

I must admit that I did not know much about J.D. Salinger before I saw this documentary, so I actually got a lot out of it.I feel the film identifies the forces that shaped Salinger: his early quest to be published in the "New Yorker" magazine, and the status he felt that would bring him, then the withdrawal from public life when he became disillusioned with the trappings of fame. The film explores the impact of his unrequited love for Oona O'Neill, and the troubled relationships with the women who followed. "Salinger" also tells how memories of the war were never far from his mind for the rest of his life.Told entirely through interviews, the filmmakers found many of the key players in his life – some are riveting: the quiet dignity of the veterans he served with during the war balanced against tell-all accounts by some of the women he encountered and left behind. All add to an understanding of what the man wrote.The film details how Salinger entered military service in WW2, landed at Utah Beach on D-Day, fought across France into Germany then on to the Hurtgen Forest. He survived to see the horrors of Dachau concentration camp – eventually he suffered a breakdown.Just before seeing this documentary, I had read Robert Rush's "Hell in Hurtgen Forest". Having some idea about what Salinger must have experienced during the war is enough to get my respect even if he had never written anything more significant than a shopping list.Salinger was attracted to many beautiful young women – some of them very young. These days, with the paparazzi likely to pop up out of a celebrity's bowl of corn flakes, some of his relationships, no matter how platonic, would no doubt have attracted more attention than they did back then.Most intriguing was his marriage to a German girl just after the war – she a Nazi, he a Jew who had seen the concentration camps. This documentary didn't have to try too hard to portray Salinger as enigmatic.Throughout the film are interviews with people inspired by "Catcher in the Rye", who virtually stalked Salinger. They quite innocently tell how they tracked him down and forced a meeting. Along with murderers claiming they were inspired by "Catcher" to perpetrate their crimes, it's little wonder he became a semi-recluse.The film is visually stylish, even if some of the war footage gets a little mixed up. I also detected some surprising influences such as the multi-screen montage sequence and Craig Armstrong's anthem-like score from "Love Actually".However, "Salinger" captures the mystery of the man and the impact of his writing. One point really comes through; Salinger's characters were a part of him; they were expressions of everything he had experienced and felt, and he was protective of them. By the end of this film you understand why.

". . . I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all." Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the RyeNo writer in the 20th century cultivated such an obsessive privacy as J. D. Salinger. As famed as his Catcher in the Rye was, he was equally jealous of his privacy. Shane Salerno's documentary "Salinger" does a modest job highlighting his almost hermit life in New England. However, the above quote reveals as much as any documentary could hope to do the innocence and privacy of Salinger's iconic character and maybe himself.Otherwise, this doc is occasionally and unintentionally hilarious when it uses the same still photos of Salinger over and over for want of an extant variety. A few of the talking heads are actors who may have no real cred to talk about the author (Martin Sheen, Phillip Seymour Hoffman); at other times the real deals like author and friend A.E. Hotchner and noted writer Gore Vidal comment with insight.The women such as Joyce Maynard, who lived with him, and his daughter Margaret provide the best insight into his emotional and physical isolation. Beyond these first-hand recollections, it's hard for director Shane Salerno to shake anything new from the Salinger tree of life. The Internet holds the same information.Then there's the heavy-handed music, most amusingly prominent in the final sequence that reveals what the Internet already has disclosed: Salinger, who died in 2010 at 91, authorized several original works to be released between 2015 and 2020. This information is about the only new material in the documentary.In the end, Salinger himself is in charge. Most of the commentary is broad and speculative, lacking the inside information the world clamors for. He is as rebellious and disdainful of phoniness as Holden Caulfield. Actually, he probably is Caulfield--I fit right in with the other clueless commentators.J.D. Salinger remains an enigma and a powerful one at that: "If three people used something I wrote in this fashion, I'd be very troubled by it." Playwright John Guare on crimes by Catcher in the Rye devotees.

If you really want to hear about it, SADLY, Salinger doc was awful. Terribly executed and most of all PHONY. It's everything Salinger himself hated. Bombastic, sensationalistic, voyeuristic, and just plan dull. To make up for it the genius of a director adds the worst over-scored music just so you know what to feel during each moment. AND to make matters worst, there are cheesy reenactments of a shadowy guy playing Salinger at a typewriter smoking a cig through out. As a JD fan I felt shitty watching it. There was one real moment in the whole film(WW2 vet telling a story). But thats all. It'll kill ya, whether you adore Salinger or love documentaries, it'll tear you to pieces for two and a half hours. Ugh! The horrible reviews were dead on. The book is a bit better, I must say, but doesn't make me want to finish it. I'll just wait until Salinger's new stories come out. Fingers crossed.