This
is Sundance, not Tribeca. Nevertheless, Robert De Niro has some family business
to tend to. In revealing interviews, De
Niro will discuss the life and artistic reputation of his painter father in
Perri Peltz & Geeta Gandbhir’s Remembering
the Artist Robert De Niro Sr., which screens as part of Documentary Shorts
Program II at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, before its HBO premiere later
in the year.
The
senior De Niro is often lumped in with his Abstract Expressionist colleagues,
but he was always a much more figurative painter. Championed by Peggy Guggenheim at an early
point in his career, De Niro was once the leading contender amongst his fellow
Hans Hofmann students. Yet, it just never happened for him. Deeply influenced by French Modernists
(Matisse in particular seems to echo in his work), De Niro became increasingly
out of step with the Pop and Op directions the American art world took.
Peltz
& Gandbhir’s battery of experts do excellent job placing De Niro senior
within the context of American art history.
After seeing the film, most viewers will be convinced De Niro the artist
would be worthy of the documentary treatment even if he were not the father of
De Niro the actor. Still, there is no
denying the De Niro family connection adds an additional element of drama. As lead interview subject and the narrator of
select excerpts from his father’s diary, the junior De Niro is pretty
forthright about the senior De Niro’s depression and sexuality issues. Indeed,
he opens up to a surprising extent regarding what sounds like a loving but
problematic relationship.