André Is an Idiot
(USA, 88 min.)
Dir. Tony Benna
Programme: US Documentary Competition (World premiere)
I’m forever fascinated by how films can fundamentally change based on what’s going on in our own lives or in the world around us. I’ve seen films weeks after first hearing about a subject, or re-watched titles that I didn’t connect with at first only to discover years later how they completely fit with personal experiences. Yet perhaps there is no film I’ve connected with lately as strongly as Tony Benna’s André Is an Idiot, which tells the story of a man with a nimbus of salt and pepper hair and beard, an acerbic personality, and a victim of not having gone to get a colonoscopy in time.
The fact that I happened to watch André Is an Idiot mere days after enduring the aforementioned procedure, a bi-annual event that requires the removal of what helpfully is described as “pre-cancerous” polyps that grow nearly at the end (or beginning?) of my intestinal track, gave this story of a man battling stage-four cancer extra poignancy. Reluctantly, as I approached fifty years of age, I scheduled my appointment, only to have that surreal moment in much of diagnostic medicine that when you go looking for stuff, you often find it. In André Ricciardi’s case, he left it too late, and over the course of this moving, warm, and surprisingly entertaining film, we watch him die because of it.
Told through a series of interviews, direct-to-camera confessions, and some enchantingly darkly comical stop motion sequences, we’re granted unique insight into Ricciardi’s last years. His relationship with his wife sets the initial stage of surrealism, originally a green card marriage that almost accidentally morphed into a real one, complete with kids and decades of living together until quite literally death doth parted them. Ricciardi’s work in marketing is self-described as a waste of talent, reflecting that this particular skillset should have been reserved for something else when given only a few great things to do with his life.
This, of course, is shown to be mere self-critical deflection, especially when he reconnects with the marketing firm that he formerly partnered with and is now promoting colonoscopies through a series of seemingly risqué allusions to anal sphincters in the form of balloon ends, the stalk-end of oranges, and so on. As with the film as a whole, Ricciardi’s own self-dubbed idiocy to refuse to get a checkup is put front and center. This makes the long struggle to his finale as potent a message as any of the ones he helped craft during the heyday of his advertising career.
We are introduced to Ricciardi’s kids, his friends, his colleagues, and even a coach who takes him out to a valley to practice his death scream. The effort generates a guttural howl so that when his time finally slipped away his representative last words had already been forcefully intoned. For much of the film, these zany asides and Ricciardi’s ironic air make one almost forget the inevitable trajectory. Even though one knows where things are headed from the first moments of the film, the final act is nothing short of deeply moving, even shocking, as if somehow some miracle was to occur and all his (and our) deepest fears were to be alleviated.
Alas, such miracles only happen in films, making this particular movie, with its direct and forthcoming gaze right through to the final days, all that more engaging. Losing hair, having tubes and needles poked into one’s body, and the lethargy of chemo are to be expected from films like this. Yet when we see the skeletal figure of the vibrant man we met mere minutes ago in film-time, the multi-year descent compressed into feature-length digestibility, the radical transformation is as alarming as it is heartbreaking.
Yet above all, André’s message is to learn from his so-called idiocy, all without ever coming across as preaching, dogmatic, or overly manipulative. Benna and his collaborators including editor Parker Laramie, musician Dan Deacon, and the animation team from the aptly named Flesh and Bones, Inc., do an absolutely stellar job of skating the line between the tragic nature of his health condition and the spirit of the subject slowly being stripped away.
It’s a joy that audiences throughout the world will be able to share in André’s story. People talk all the time about the courage of the terminally ill, or put their struggles in militaristic terms like “battling” or “fighting” against these cells that are killing them from within. Yet Ricciardi’s battle, while certainly one that involves wretched chemicals and other medical treatments, is equally one where his voice is kept going, with all his sense of humour and silliness intact.
This is not merely a showcase for laughing in the face of death as a mere exercise in deflection or denial. Rather, this is André reflecting upon his most grave of mistakes, letting us into his thoughts as he processes the moments of his final years, and crafting a remarkably three-dimensional portrait of a fascinating individual.
And so while I can see in so many ways how we’re different, from our decisions to our taste in music to our ways of engaging with those closest to us, it was near impossible not to see André holding up a mirror to my own life. I’m certain that others will no doubt feel the same level of deep empathy, but there’s something about his pallid skin and withered look, the once shining eyes now cloudy, the mane of hair now tamed to a wiry mess, that felt very much like looking into my own inevitable end. I may not be an idiot in exactly the same way, but certainly there’s more that I could do to be a better person, to take better care, to grasp the opportunities for experiencing joy all that much harder when they appear.
In short, through this portrait of Ricciardi we are granted insight into this remarkable individual, as well as a piercing encouragement towards self-reflection. The brilliance of the film’s construction is how gently it encourages us to look inwards just as we observe what we see on screen, showing us ways in which why we are all fools at times, it’s never too late to begin the process of making the best from our foolishness. It’s this that makes André Is an Idiot one of the most moving, most hilarious, most tragic, most wonderful works of non-fiction filmmaking in many years.