‘Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie’: Sundance Review

Dir: Davis Guggenheim. US. 2022. 95mins

Michael J. Fox doesn’t want the audience’s pity, and Davis Guggenheim’s documentary portrait honours its subject’s request, presenting a moving but honest snapshot of the actor’s career and life with Parkinson’s disease. Speaking directly to camera, Fox is blunt, thoughtful and funny as he discusses his condition, although the prevailing sentiment is one of contentment: at 61, he seems at peace with both the good fortune and unexpected twists that have come his way.

What’s interesting is how the documentary both adheres to and sidesteps the rise-then-fall-then-rise-again narrative arc that’s so typical of biopics.

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie will be released through Apple TV+, and fans of the venerable star should enjoy this trip down memory lane — as well as be touched by Fox’s reflections on Parkinson’s, which he was diagnosed with at the age of 29. Tearjerking and intimate, the documentary invites viewers to witness the actor’s physical and emotional struggles, and while Fox is often upbeat, he doesn’t deny his daily challenges. 

Working with editor Michael Harte, Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) incorporates impressionistic re-creations as well as footage from Fox’s sitcoms and films to add visuals to the stories that the actor tells. In addition, Still draws from Fox’s memoirs, which Fox narrates himself, and occasionally Guggenheim shows that  recording process — which can prove taxing on Fox because of his wavering voice.  

That’s just one way in which the documentary sheds light on the reality of Parkinson’s: indeed, among Still’s most affecting sequences are quiet moments in which Fox works with his physical trainer, the two men trying to increase the star’s mobility or to get him to slow down his brain so that his unpredictable body doesn’t get ahead of him. (Early on in Still, we watch Fox walk down the street with his trainer and suddenly fall down — as we will learn, this is not uncommon for those with Parkinson’s.) 

Naturally, Guggenheim also takes time to explore Fox’s stardom in the 1980s and early 1990s, with Fox guiding us through the lean years before making his breakthrough on the hit sitcom Family Ties, which soon paved the way for the summer blockbuster Back To The Future. As indicated by the title, Still notes the irony that, in his 20s, Fox was enjoying such a meteoric rise that he hardly seemed to sit still — and, now because of the involuntary movements he battles due to Parkinson’s, stillness remains a difficult thing to achieve, albeit for very different reasons. 

What’s interesting is how the documentary both adheres to and sidesteps the rise-then-fall-then-rise-again narrative arc that’s typical of biopics. To be sure, as Fox admits, he was such a shooting star at such a young age that he had a hard time keeping his feet on the ground, but with the help of actress Tracy Pollan, who later became his wife, he started to move away from the excesses inherent to overnight success. But his Parkinson’s diagnosis, which he and his family kept hidden from the world for years, created new obstacles, leading Fox to alcoholism to escape his troubles. Like other talented people who turn to performing to run away from insecurities — only to discover that fame does nothing to squelch those anxieties — Fox couldn’t cope with the person he became, his Parkinson’s only exacerbating his unhappiness.

Sometimes Still tries too hard to marry footage from Fox’s movies to the present-day struggles he’s addressing. And some of the film’s needle drops are such overused choices — such as ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ scored to a sequence concerning Fox’s wild 1980s — that it robs Still of the specificity of the unique story it tells. 

But when the documentary simply focuses on Fox talking to Guggenheim — and to us — we’re treated to a charming, introspective man who can articulate beautifully how he lives with his condition. At one point, he compares waiting for his medication to kick in to “waiting for the bus,” and earlier in Still he verbalises his annoyance at having something funny to say but his mouth and brain not being able to work in sync at that moment. (And when, after Guggenheim asks him to describe his wife Tracy, and he pauses for a long time before simply saying, “Clarity” it’s hard not to feel a lump in one’s throat.) Far from presenting Michael J. Fox as a tragic case, Still is uplifting but also clear-eyed — as piercing as the look Fox gives the camera as he stares straight into the lens.