Essentially,
most of what you have heard is true.
Salinger did not stop writing in 1965. In conjunction with the documentary’s
publicity campaign, news of five new Salinger works to be published beginning in
2015 has already been released. Yes,
readers might recognize some of the characters, but there is still more to Salinger the man and the film than that.
There
are two main threads to Salerno’s years-in-the-making documentary. One explores Salinger the recluse, arguing the
author knowingly fueled the mystique that surrounded his withdrawal from public
life. Concurrently, Salerno also
documents Salinger’s life, including his formative years spent in the army during
WWII. Experiencing D-Day, the liberation
of Dachau, and the de-nazification campaign, Salinger saw more horrors that he
never shook off.
To
his credit, Salerno never seeks to defend or condemn Salinger. He simply explains. Given the context of his military experience
and painful early romances, viewers can better understand how Salinger became
such a figure of thorny complexity. By
the same token, Salerno never excuses Salinger’s more problematic behavior,
such as his history of pursuing highly impressionable and considerably younger
women (girls, really), only to treat them with cool detachment once they
commenced a relationship.
Despite
the paucity of Salinger photos and video, Salerno constructs a fully balanced,
multi-dimensional portrait of the author.
He incorporates scores of talking head interviews, but most participants
are heard from only briefly. However, Salinger’s
former companions (or what have you) Joyce Meynard and Jean Miller have
sufficient time to tell their very personal stories. Yet, perhaps the best sequences involve
Salinger’s army buddies, with whom he remained on good terms throughout his
life.
