Each of Ross McElwee’s deeply personal documentaries is built directly atop a fault line that separates — or connects — the microcosmic and the universal.
But few films could be more unsparingly intimate than “Remake,” and it’s no spoiler to say why: before we’re five minutes in, he’s bluntly shared the gut-punch purpose of this project. To quote his narration, which is spoken directly to his son Adrian, it’s “to convince myself that you were alive, but also to convince myself that you’re gone.”
“Remake” is designed much like all of McElwee’s deceptively quiet films, with a notable distinction. This one is a collaboration, of sorts, with Adrian himself. It starts by going back decades, when the director earned indie fame with cultishly beloved docs like “Sherman’s March,” “Time Indefinite” and “In Paraguay.” McElwee typically enlists his friends and family, using his own life as a mirror in which we eventually glimpse something much larger. And as we see in old film clips that hit very differently now, a young Adrian — unusually bright, undeniably adorable — was a stalwart presence in front of his father’s camera. (McElwee also explored their changing relationship in his last film, 2011’s “Photographic Memory.”)
We see Adrian as an ever-smiling newborn, a toddler showing early artistic talent, a little boy enamored with his parents. And then a teen getting kicked out of school, a young man diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a 20something who checks himself into rehab.
But what we also see is that Adrian was, even in his darkest moments, always Adrian. He’d kept hold of his pensive eloquence, his innate gifts and his admiration of his father. He had begun making films as well. So even as McElwee sifts through his own work over the last 25 years, in order to review — if not remake — his family’s life, he’s pulled into his son’s perspective through footage left behind.
When Adrian captures himself skiing alone through a lushly blanketed forest, in a rare moment of peace, it feels as though time stops. When Adrian films his dad with angry impatience, it speeds ahead with wrenching force. And when Adrian turns the camera toward himself, to try and make sense of something bigger than his addictions, it boomerangs.
Obviously, there is no subject more painful than the loss of a child. And it is impossible to imagine how difficult it must have been for McElwee to make this movie at every stage, from inception to edits to completion. Indeed, the topic is so overwhelming that attempts to address other experiences — including a thread about his 1986 breakout “Sherman’s March” — feel more suited to a separate documentary.
As with all his films, though, this one is consistently thoughtful and painstakingly open. Most of his projects have dealt with serious issues, including death. But it’s the inclusion of Adrian’s footage that elevates this beautiful, tragic movie from powerful to profound. As the grief-stricken McElwee reconstructs a timeline that still makes little sense, he questions the purpose of his own career. His son’s evident love and talent, which will live on forever thanks to “Remake,” provide an indelible answer.
