Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (dir. Morgan Neville).
Neville captures all the notable aspects of Bourdain’s personality of a lost and tortured soul in the form of a world traveller despite the ethical thorniness of its storytelling. His documentary compiles countless hours of archival footage from his many shows, interviews, travelogues, and behind-the-scenes video to allow the man to narrate his own unlikely stardom, accomplished carreer, remarkable life, and ultimate death by suicide. What we get is a man obsessed with the illusion of himself through cinema and myth-making.
By far the murkiest element of the film is its treatment of Asia Agento and how it comes close to outright blaming her. It’s tricky and misguided at best with her voice and side of the story missing as Bourdain’s closest collaborators give their own accounts of his behaviour before taking his own life. Still, the film is a gutting, emotional ride that gets across his complexity.
