Martha (2024)
7.0
A revealing portrait of a woman who’s truly done it all
Movie
United States of America
English
Documentary
2024
R.J. CUTLER
Martha Stewart
116 min
TLDR
It's short and sweet, with only a very subtle bitter aftertaste.
What it's about
Martha Stewart, dubbed the first influencer, sits down with director R.J. Cutler to recount her life.
The take
It’s hard to botch a documentary about Martha Stewart, she who lived so many lives (she was a model, a stockbroker, a convict, a homemaker, and now a TikTok darling) and she who came back from one of the hardest celebrity downfalls stronger than ever. Her life is a roller coaster ride and watching the documentary certainly feels like being in one too. Whenever Stuart dodged a question, director R.J. Cutler did well to zoom in on a twinge on her face or show a previous photo or clip that may reveal the answer. It’s well made that way. Only the prison scenes left a bitter taste in the mouth—why should I feel sorry for her hundred-day stint when so many other wrongly imprisoned women with less privilege are still stuck there?—but everything else about this dense portrait is very filling and entertaining.
What stands out
Something smart I didn’t even realize the film did ‘till later is that it never used talking heads. It sourced a lot of important new interviews from experts and friends, but the most they got was a photo with Stewart—if they didn’t have that, they only had a name and title in the lower, negligible right side of the screen. This made for a purer watch: we could focus on the details, and rightly so, since so many things were happening all at once in Stewart’s life. It’s also nice to zoom into her delicate homemaking details.
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